Coinbase adds stock trading and prediction markets…accelerates 'everything app' strategy

The United States' largest crypto exchange Coinbase has expanded its platform by adding stock trading and prediction market services. The plan to become an 'everything app', encompassing traditional financial products beyond crypto assets, appears to be moving into full swing.

On the 17th (local time), according to Cointelegraph, Max Branzburg, Coinbase's head of consumer and business products, said at a year-end conference, "Stock trading is now available on Coinbase." He explained, "This is an important milestone in the plan to use crypto-based infrastructure to enable 24-hour trading of stocks and ETFs anywhere in the world."

Coinbase also launched a prediction market service. Branzburg said the prediction market will be launched through a partnership with Kalshi and will be rolled out from today and later expanded to the U.S. market. Earlier last month, tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong had detected signs that Coinbase was developing a prediction market platform based on Kalshi.

Coinbase also announced plans to launch a 24-hour perpetual (Perpetual) product early next year. The product is expected to be designed to allow bets on both rises and falls in stock prices as well as crypto assets with up to 50x leverage. This is a strategy to strengthen competitiveness in the derivatives area.

Branzburg emphasized that this new lineup is part of Coinbase's 'everything exchange' strategy. In July, Coinbase rebranded its wallet app as the 'everything app' and had signaled platform expansion in a direction that integrates app, social network, and chat features.

Market observers say Coinbase is evolving from a trading-fee-centered crypto exchange model into a comprehensive on-chain financial platform encompassing stocks, derivatives, and prediction markets. The launch of stock trading and prediction markets is interpreted as a sign that the strategy has entered the execution phase.