Coinbase Is Chasing The 80% Of Crypto Trading It Doesn't Touch

Coinbase's stock moves with bitcoin - down about 26% this year, tracking the coin's slide almost step for step.

This week, the company laid out a plan to break that link.

The Everything App

At its System Update event in New York, Coinbase rolled out new products across derivatives, tokenized stocks, stablecoin payments, lending, and AI tools.

Barclays analyst Benjamin Budish called it Coinbase's push to become "the 'everything' exchange" - one app where customers trade, pay, borrow, and invest.

The pitch to investors: stop being a bitcoin proxy and build a business that makes money whether crypto is hot or cold.

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The Real Prize Is Derivatives

Of all the launches, analysts kept circling back to one: derivatives.

Options and futures make up roughly 80% of global crypto trading volume, yet Coinbase barely touches that market today.

Most of its revenue still comes from spot trading - buying and selling actual coins - which is a much smaller slice of the pie and depends heavily on retail traders showing up when prices are rising.

Clear Street analyst Owen Lau called derivatives "the prize," while Cantor Fitzgerald flagged Coinbase's new global trading pool linking activity across markets and JPMorgan highlighted the push to bring more derivatives products to U.S. customers.

Coinbase has been building out its derivatives arm for years, picking up futures exchange FairX in 2022 and rolling out perpetual futures for international customers more recently.

Derivatives revenue also tends to be steadier than spot, since traders use options and futures to hedge their bets - meaning they keep trading even when prices are flat or falling.

That's the kind of recurring revenue Coinbase doesn't have much of today.

The Slow-Build Bets

Stablecoins - digital tokens pegged to the dollar - are the other piece, with Coinbase leaning into stablecoin payments and tools that help businesses build crypto into their operations.

The company already partners with Circle on USDC, the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether, and earns a cut of the interest on the reserves backing the token.

Clear Street described the stablecoin push as a slow-build revenue stream that doesn't ride bitcoin's swings.

Coinbase also wants to be the "financial account for AI" - meaning when AI agents start moving money around the internet to pay for services or settle transactions, they route it through Coinbase.

Cantor analysts said the company's "innovation engine hasn't skipped a beat" - even though the numbers won't show it yet.

What To Watch

Wall Street isn't raising estimates on Coinbase yet because the new products are too early to show up in revenue.

But the strategy is clear: build a business that doesn't need a bitcoin rally to make money.

Whether it works depends on derivatives. If Coinbase can grab a real piece of that 80%, it stops being a bitcoin proxy.

For now, when bitcoin moves, Coinbase still moves with it.

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