Coinbase shared a slate of new offerings at its System Update conference, including prediction markets, robo-advisers and custom stablecoins.
Coinbase’s year-end “System Update” conference on Wednesday saw the company announce a slew of new offerings as it branches out from its crypto exchange roots.
In addition to introducing stock trading and prediction markets to its platform, Coinbase announced plans to expand into custom stablecoins, tokenization, and AI-powered investment advisers.
Here’s the top eight things you may have missed from Coinbase’s conference.
The headline feature, and the first thing Coinbase announced, was that it’s adding stock trading to its platform.
Coinbase head of consumer and business products, Max Branzburg, said the product was “a major milestone in our plan to enable 24/7 trading of stocks and ETFs from anywhere in the world, powered by crypto.”
The product, rolling out from today in the US, now puts Coinbase in competition with the likes of Robinhood and eToro, which have offered stocks and crypto on the same platform for years. It’s also looking to get ahead of rivals Kraken and Gemini, which already offer tokenized stocks outside of the US.
Coinbase has also added prediction markets powered by Kalshi, offering betting on topics such as sports and politics.
The prediction markets will begin their rollout today and later come to the US, with Coinbase set to join a packed market that includes, or is set to include, Polymarket, Gemini, DraftKings, Robinhood and eToro, among others.
Analysts at Citizens Financial Group recently estimated that prediction market companies will likely see their revenues grow fivefold to $10 billion by 2030.
The company is also offering up Coinbase Advisor, an AI-powered financial management adviser akin to similar products offered by Robinhood and eToro, that can offer investment advice across crypto, stocks and prediction markets based on user input or current news events.
Coinbase’s AI product lead Lincoln Murr said the robo adviser is “actively curated by a team of portfolio managers with 75 years of combined experience.” Coinbase Advisor is currently in beta access and only available to select users.
Coinbase infrastructure lead Alex Lovett said the company would offer “custom stablecoins” backed by USDC (USDC), which he pitched as allowing companies to “embed your brand in every transaction.”
Lovett said the exchange is working with the wallet platforms Solflare, Flipcash and the yield protocol R2 to launch their custom stablecoins in the coming months.”
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company will offer an “end-to-end solution for bringing offchain assets onchain” called Coinbase Tokenize that “combines issuance, custody, compliance, and trading all in one place.”
Tokenizing assets could be a major cash cow as major financial institutions begin to dabble in the technology, and in the case of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, have the goal of tokenizing some of the most liquid traditional finance assets.
In an accompanying blog post, Coinbase said it would give updates on the service early next year.
The exchange also expanded its decentralized trading integration with Solana tokens after an integration with the decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter, which will roll out over the next few weeks. It added more networks will be added over time.
Related: Crypto’s ‘super app’ race is on as industry enters aggregation era: Report
Coinbase product head Branzburg said it will mean users can trade tokens “as soon as they’re created, all within the Coinbase app and without waiting for a centralized exchange listing.”
Coinbase has also simplified its futures and perpetual futures offerings, which it said allows users to trade with less cash upfront and better tax benefits when trading across crypto and commodities.
“Today, all US traders can now trade futures and perpetual futures in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface directly on Coinbase,” said Branzburg. “We have more than 30 futures and per contracts live in the US across asset classes from crypto to commodities to equity indices, with plans to expand to hundreds more contracts over time.”
The app for Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, Base, was also made officially available in over 140 countries, but no plans were shared for a native token, which users are highly anticipating.
Coinbase rebranded its wallet app to the Base App in July, which kicked off its plans for an “everything app” as it added apps, social networks and chat features.
