Coinbase just announced its boldest expansion ever — stocks, prediction markets, Solana DEX trading, stablecoins, and derivatives — all inside one app.
Within hours, U.S. regulators quietly removed key barriers that once blocked banks and brokers from touching crypto at scale.
This isn’t coincidence. It’s sequencing.
Coinbase is no longer pretending to be just a crypto exchange.
The company unveiled a sweeping expansion that turns its app into a multi-asset financial hub, blending crypto, equities, derivatives, onchain assets, and payments into a single interface.
Key additions include:
Coinbase’s message is simple: why leave the app at all?
This isn’t just product sprawl — it’s architecture.
By letting users trade stocks, tokens, perps, prediction contracts, and stablecoins side-by-side, Coinbase is positioning itself as a financial operating system, not a brokerage.
What stands out:
This mirrors what Robinhood tried — but with crypto-native rails underneath.
Here’s where the timing matters.
On the same period as Coinbase’s announcement, the Federal Reserve withdrew a 2023 policy that strongly discouraged state-chartered banks from engaging in “novel” crypto activities.
That policy had:
It’s now gone. Also read about Amina, The First European Bank to Fully Integrate Ripple
Uninsured state member banks can once again apply to engage in crypto activities on a case-by-case basis.
That’s not a green light — but it’s no longer a red one.
Then came another subtle but critical shift.
The SEC released guidance stating that broker-dealers can custody tokenized securities — as long as they:
Translation: tokenized stocks, bonds, and funds now have a regulatory custody framework.
This directly supports:
Coinbase didn’t expand blindly.
It expanded after:
This is what regulatory thaw looks like — not explosive headlines, but quiet permissions stacking up.
For everyday users, this signals:
The “everything exchange” only works if regulators allow the plumbing to connect.
That permission just arrived.
Crypto isn’t replacing finance.
It’s absorbing it — layer by layer.
Coinbase’s expansion only makes sense in a world where:
And regulators, finally, are building rules that acknowledge that reality.
