Coinbase seeks all of your net worth, offers you a window seat

The Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange wants users to store their entire net worth on the exchange, possibly so you can lose more of it faster.

• Coinbase’s system update promises ‘real’ tokenized stocks
• Coinbase’s prediction markets bring you democracy, parlays
• A crypto exec, a travel agent and a mortgage broker walk into a bar…
• Base takes a page from privacy playbook
• Coinbase tops Fortune’s ‘Crypto 100’, Armstrong’s security budget tops all

On Tuesday, Coinbase hosted a ‘system update’ to promote its latest crop of product launches/expansions. The event was billed under the banner of ‘Take Control,’ an apparent reference to users seeking a greater degree of autonomy, but could also refer to Coinbase seeking to worm its way into every facet of your financial life. Not for nothing have they begun calling themselves the ‘everything exchange.’

The presentation was given before an audience apparently comprised of Coinbase staffers, whose enthusiasm for the blandest of product announcements wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Pyongyang. One wonders if there was an ‘applause’ sign flashing just out of camera range.

The company let at least one cat out of this bag a few hours before the presentation, tweeting that “real, 1:1 backed tokenized stocks are coming.” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong followed up by tweeting that, unlike other tokenized versions of publicly traded shares, these products “will give all the benefits of true ownership, with all the benefits of tokenized assets.”

The company later revealed that its tokenized stocks can be traded 24/7 on-chain, lent out to earn ‘yield,’ used as collateral for loans, or even sent to someone “as a gift.” (Beats giving socks at Christmas, doesn’t it?) Coinbase is also making it easy for customers to transfer existing stock portfolios to the exchange.

Armstrong kicked off the event by telling the audience that the company would focus on three major areas: trading every asset possible on one platform, stablecoin payments, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Armstrong then introduced his VP of product, Max Branzburg, who talked up plans to ensure all Coinbase customers around the world have access to the same shared liquidity pool for spot and derivatives trading (the latter was previously limited to the Bermuda-based Coinbase International and inaccessible by U.S. retail customers).

But Branzburg quickly downshifted into how we are apparently living through “a hot IPO summer,” thanks in part to Elon Musk’s SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) making its market debut last week. (For the record, crypto’s efforts to tokenize SPCX proved a major bust.)

Branzburg hyped Coinbase’s launch of pre-IPO perpetual futures, which will give retail investors early opportunities to buy the hype for companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Coinbase is also launching options trading for U.S. users “in the coming weeks.” And then there’s ‘thematic indices,’ four separate baskets of stocks linked to AI, China, defense, or tech, that will trade “24/5” and offer 20x leverage “on the things you want to trade.”

Promethean markets

If you think Coinbase couldn’t get closer to living up to its reputation as a ‘crypto casino,’ you ain’t seen nothing yet. Branzburg hyped Coinbase’s expansion into the world of prediction markets by announcing plans for ‘crypto binaries,’ basically event windows that resolve in periods as short as 15 minutes for those with short attention spans and/or addiction issues.

Coinbase will also allow users/bettors to build their own parlay wagers (or ‘combos’) that allow you to “roll up multiple predictions into a single, much more powerful position.” The enthusiastic applause/hooting this announcement prompted from the audience suggests Coinbase has high hopes for this new revenue stream (as well they should, given the fact that most ‘predictors’ lose money.)

Perhaps the most annoying thing about Coinbase’s embrace of prediction markets is the company’s insistence on painting it as some selfless Promethean action so that you can share your opinions. Like you can’t now just simply stand on any street corner screaming ‘Knicks rule.’ Well, you can, but neither you nor Coinbase would get paid for doing so.

A slide that appeared behind Branzburg called prediction markets “the most powerful force democratizing information.” Here’s some information for you: the only truly revolutionary aspect here is that Coinbase has figured out a way to offer sports betting without first obtaining state-issued gaming licenses.

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AI, travel rewards, crypto mortgages

Next up was Coinbase’s VP of markets, Liz Martin, who began by emphasizing the global liquidity pool, with a focus on offering U.S. customers access to leveraged derivatives and retail access to products previously available only to institutions.

But Martin soon lateraled back to Branzburg for details on the company’s new AI integrations. This includes Coinbase Advisor, a “fee-free, [Securities and Exchange Commission]-registered, AI-powered investment advisor,” accessible 24/7 for advice on how best to allocate your resources. But while Advisor may be fee-free, it’s currently being rolled out only for members of the subscription-based Coinbase One program.

Branzburg also promoted Coinbase for Agents, which allows users to link their preferred AI model to their Coinbase account and let it make trades on their behalf based on the user’s instructions.

Branzburg then ceded the stage to director of product management Roy Zhang, who pimped the Coinbase One card secured by the USDC stablecoin that’s issued by Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) and is responsible for much of Coinbase’s revenue. The Card, which launched last year, is being made available to people with less than sterling credit scores (but have USDC that can act as a security deposit) so they too can earn rewards.

And if the volatility of crypto assets leads to wild swings while you’re sleeping or simply not paying attention, Coinbase is offering borrowers built-in “liquidation protection,” in which the exchange will automatically top up your collateral by taking the funds out of your Coinbase account.

Coinbase has also partnered with Better.com to offer BTC-backed mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, allowing token holders to avoid the tax implications of selling their tokens to make a down payment. Coinbase One members can even get up to $10,000 back in mortgage rewards. Zhang predicted that “one day, we might see entire crypto-backed neighborhoods.” Possibly, but only after El Salvador goes first.

Zhang summed his presentation up with a line that seems to embody Coinbase’s new mission statement, to get customers to “feel comfortable storing their entire net worth on Coinbase.”

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Base: how high can you go?

Leaving retail users aside for the moment, head of infrastructure products Alec Lovett detailed the company’s plans to update its Coinbase Developer Platform (CDP) to incorporate Coinbase Payments, a stablecoin solution for companies looking to expand the scope of their financial flows. Coinbase Payments incorporates four elements: USDC, the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, digital wallets, and an API layer.

Speaking of Base, the network’s point man Jesse Pollak announced a new native token standard (B20) that’s going live this week. Basically, Base’s version of Ethereum’s ERC-20 offers a “built-in compliance toolkit.” In Pollak’s words, “anyone can deploy any kind of asset on B20 … stablecoins, real-world assets, and onchain native tokens.”

The Base app is going multi-network, expanding beyond its Ethereum Virtual Machine roots to incorporate BTC and Solana, and getting a web launch at Base.app. And nearly all the new products that Coinbase announced will also be coming to Base “so you can trade everything all in one place.”

Then there’s Base Ledgers, a private transaction option for enterprises that offers auditability and compliance for regulators without exposing all of a company’s doings to the world. Pollak said the first of these private transactions was conducted on Base this week.

Investors barely had time to digest all of the above before the markets closed, but the company’s share price effectively shrugged during the hour that the presentation lasted. Coinbase closed Tuesday at $169.27, down 0.2% for the day and barely budged in after-hours trading.

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Fortune smiles, customers not so much

It’s not quite a new product launch, but Coinbase announced late last month it had finally made its exchange “fully accessible to Indian retail traders with direct INR support,” allowing Indian customers to deposit and withdraw in rupees via their bank accounts.

Coinbase’s record in India is mixed, having been forced to exit the market in 2023 after treating local regulators like speed bumps. Coinbase’s return last year was far more tentative (and humble), including registering with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

But it’s hard to be humble now that Coinbase was just ranked the top centralized exchange in Fortune’s inaugural Crypto 100 list, topping rivals Binance, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, and OKX (to round out the top-five).

Not sparing the hyperbole, Fortune claimed that despite Coinbase’s meteoric rise, the company has “remained committed to the decentralized ethos of crypto, as reflected in homegrown successes like the Base blockchain and the fast-emerging x402 protocol.”

Ranking Coinbase over Binance could reflect Fortune’s American bias, as Binance handles 5x the spot trading volume that Coinbase enjoys. Binance also has its own proprietary network (BNB Chain) and has launched many products before Coinbase got around to it (although that’s partly due to Coinbase’s need to adhere to U.S. regulations, an obligation Binance need not observe).

It’s not on the Fortune list, but Coinbase also holds the top spot in a far less admirable category: unplanned downtime. The latest of these occurred on May 7, when the exchange went offline for seven hours due to what Armstrong claimed was “a room overheating in an AWS [Amazon Web Service] datacenter when multiple chillers failed.”

Armstrong said it was “possible to make exchanges resistant to [availability zone] failures, but this can introduce latency delays that are not desirable, along with breaking customer co-location.” In the wake of this latest incident, Armstrong said Coinbase would “revisit these tradeoffs to ensure we’re giving you the best possible venue to trade.”

Outsiders were quick to “call bullshit” on Armstrong’s claims, noting that “Coinbase could have fairly easily designed their system to fail over to a secondary Availability Zone AND THEIR CUSTOMERS COULD’VE FOLLOWED THEM. In such a design, no additional latency is introduced. Coinbase knows this, they just don’t seem very good at their job.”

Other critics pounced on Coinbase’s past earnings reports, which showed significant reductions in expenditures on website hosting and infrastructure. While these costs have crept back up in recent years, they remain below the levels the company spent in the period preceding the onset of ‘crypto winter’ in late 2022. Others concurred, saying the solution was simply “spending more money.”

Meanwhile, Coinbase shows no reticence about spending what’s necessary to keep Armstrong safe from wrench attacks. In April, Coinbase reported spending $7.6 million on ‘personal security measures’ for Armstrong in 2025, up from $6.2 million in 2024 and $3.7 million in 2023.

The costs are part of Armstrong’s executive compensation package, but given that he’s sold over $1 billion worth of his shares in the company over the past two years—and the fact that Coinbase’s share price has fallen by one-quarter in the past 24 months—it’s not like he couldn’t afford to bear these costs himself.

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