Coinbase Unveils Options, Tokenized Stocks in
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- Coinbase announced plans for options trading on both crypto and traditional equities, tokenized stock trading with automatic dividends, and the ability to borrow against staked Solana, with equity options launching in the coming months.
- CEO Brian Armstrong said on X that the tokenized stocks will be "real 1:1 backed" — actual company ownership on-chain — explicitly contrasting the product with rivals' offerings, which he called "some form of derivative or IOU."
- The Coinbase One Card travel portal, powered by Rocket Travel by Agoda, will pay 5% back in Bitcoin on travel purchases, up from the card's typical 2-4%, and will now be accessible with USDC backing, opening it to users without traditional credit history.
- Coinbase added time-based crypto price prediction market contracts and instant access to new token launches on Solana and its Base layer-2 network, plus new transfer controls for account security.
- Head of Financial Services Ben Shen framed the expansion as making Coinbase the "everything exchange," where users can spend, send, trade, invest, and borrow in one place.
- In May, Coinbase became the first U.S. centralized exchange approved to offer crypto perpetual futures; it also recently launched pre-IPO perps starting with SpaceX and participated in the first government-guaranteed Bitcoin-backed mortgage.
Why it matters: Coinbase is moving directly onto the turf of traditional brokerages by enabling stock portfolio transfers and equity options, while Armstrong's '1:1 backed' claim on tokenized stocks is a pointed attack on competing tokenization efforts. The 5% Bitcoin-reward card and USDC-backed credit access widen the funnel beyond crypto-native users, betting the next growth wave comes from mainstream consumers, not just traders.
