Coinbase is executing its most ambitious strategic pivot to date, moving far beyond its origins as a digital asset exchange to become a comprehensive “Everything App” for global finance.
In a major “System Update” announced on December 17, 2025, the company unveiled a robust slate of products designed to challenge traditional brokerages like Robinhood and Charles Schwab. CEO Brian Armstrong’s vision is to replace the fragmented legacy financial system with a unified, always-on platform where stocks, ETFs, prediction markets, and crypto coexist on a single on-chain rail.
The cornerstone of this expansion is the immediate rollout of commission-free stock and ETF trading for U.S. users. In a significant departure from the constraints of traditional finance, Coinbase is enabling 24/5 trading, allowing investors to react instantly to overnight earnings or global macro events.
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Users can fund these trades using either traditional USD or the USDC stablecoin, effectively bridging the gap between the speed of crypto and the stability of equities. This integration simplifies portfolio management by housing diverse asset classes under one account, with plans to add thousands of additional stocks in the coming months.
Early next year, Coinbase intends to further blur these lines by introducing stock perpetuals, allowing international traders to bet on equity price movements with up to 50x leverage. This move signals Coinbase’s intent to capture the sophisticated derivatives market that has historically been the domain of major investment banks and offshore crypto platforms.
A pivotal element of the new ecosystem is the launch of Prediction Markets, integrated directly into the Coinbase app through a strategic partnership with Kalshi. As the only CFTC-regulated event contract exchange in the U.S., Kalshi provides the necessary legal rails for Coinbase users to trade on the outcomes of everything from Federal Reserve interest rate decisions to the Oscars and major sporting events.
Brian Armstrong argues that the value of these markets extends beyond mere speculation; they serve as a high-fidelity sentiment gauge. While a small fraction of users trade these as an asset class, Armstrong posits that the vast majority use them as a “truth engine” to understand collective expectations on global events—positioning prediction markets as a direct competitor to traditional news media.
“If you look at things like economic indicators … or elections, people are using prediction markets to try to figure out what is going to happen next month,” Armstrong told CNBC. “Maybe1% of people use it as an asset class to trade, and 99% of people are using it as a way to figure out what’s going to happen — almost like a competitor to traditional media or maybe even entertainment.”
By incorporating these into the “Everything Exchange,” Coinbase is betting that “always-on engagement” will keep users within the app even when crypto markets are stagnant.
Tokenization and the ‘Agentic’ Economy
Coinbase is not just expanding its retail offerings; it is fundamentally rebuilding the underlying infrastructure for institutional finance through Coinbase Tokenize. This institutional-grade stack is designed to bring Real-World Assets (RWAs), such as private credit, treasuries, and eventually real estate, onto the Base blockchain. The long-term goal is to transition the current T+2 settlement system (where it takes two days for a stock trade to clear) to a T+0, near-instant settlement model that operates 24/7 globally.
Simultaneously, the company is laying the groundwork for the future of automated commerce with the x402 protocol. This new open internet standard allows for stablecoin payments to be attached directly to HTTP web requests.
This is a critical development for the burgeoning AI agent economy, enabling autonomous software programs to pay for API access, content, or services without human intervention. In its first 30 days of testing, the protocol has already processed an annualized volume of $200 million, indicating significant early adoption by developers.
Global Business Expansion and the Singapore Launch
To support this broader ecosystem, Coinbase Business has officially made its international debut in Singapore, in collaboration with Standard Chartered. This platform serves as a “crypto operating account” for startups and small businesses, offering instant USDC settlements, global payroll in stablecoins, and automated accounting integrations with platforms like QuickBooks and Xero. By choosing Singapore—a global hub for digital innovation—as its first international business market, Coinbase is positioning itself as the primary liquidity provider for the next generation of digitally native companies.
The throughline of all these initiatives is retention and diversification. By becoming a one-stop shop for all financial needs—from an AI-powered robo-advisor to institutional tokenization tools—Coinbase aims to decouple its revenue from the volatile “feast-or-famine” cycles of crypto trading.