In brief
Coinbase announced new products and features on Tuesday as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for finance.
New trading capabilities, like options trading for crypto and stocks, are set to launch in the coming months.
Meanwhile, it will now allow users to borrow against staked Solana, earn additional Bitcoin rewards via its Coinbase One Card, and make new crypto price predictions.
Publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase has long been a popular destination for buying Bitcoin and Ethereum—but the firm’s ambitions are growing in various directions as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for all things finance.On Tuesday, Coinbase unveiled new product plans including the future launch of options trading for crypto and traditional equities, tokenized stock trading with automatic dividend payments, the ability to borrow against staked Solana, and a new travel portal for its Coinbase One Card that pays out larger Bitcoin rewards.“The throughline, in terms of Coinbase’s overall mission, is economic empowerment,” Coinbase Head of Financial Services Ben Shen told Decrypt. “It is essentially allowing customers to use money in their everyday lives, the way they want.” According to Shen, the firm’s foundations remain focused on crypto traders and investors, but it is working towards becoming the primary financial account for its users, allowing them to spend, send, trade, invest, and borrow all in one spot—with a goal of ultimately becoming the “everything exchange.”Ahead of its equity options trading launch in the coming months, the firm will also allow users to transfer in existing stock portfolios and trade them directly on Coinbase, where it is building out a more robust trading platform for equities holders.Earlier Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to social media to promote the firm's incoming tokenized stock initiative, differentiating it from other tokenized product offerings which are “some form of derivative or IOU.” Coinbase said the product will provide automatically paid dividends on held stocks.“For the first time, these are real 1:1 backed tokenized stocks you can trust,” Armstrong said on X. “You own an actual chunk of the company on-chain.
