Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) executives and industry partners discussed crypto market dynamics, U.S. regulation, and the company’s push to expand beyond spot crypto trading during a recent event featuring Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas and Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Fintech, Jigar Patel.
Crypto volatility and an “institutionally led” market
Haas said Coinbase is “no stranger to volatility,” but described the current period as different from prior downturns such as 2022 because the price declines and volatility are “really institutionally led.” She attributed the shift to the growth of crypto ETFs and broader mainstream adoption, which has increased institutional participation and, in turn, increased crypto’s correlation with macro events and risk-off sentiment.
Regulation: focus on stablecoins, tokenization, and the CLARITY Act
On U.S. legislation, Haas said Coinbase believes the industry can reach crypto market structure legislation this spring, and that companies remain engaged in ongoing negotiations around the CLARITY Act. She said Coinbase is seeking “clear rules” on asset classification and which regulator oversees which assets.
Haas highlighted the ongoing debate around stablecoin rewards and yield—specifically, “who can pay rewards on stablecoins” and what that could mean for banks and other participants. She said Coinbase believes there is a “win-win” solution and framed the issue as central to preserving customer benefits and stablecoin economics.
She also referenced recent SEC-related clarity on stablecoin collateral haircuts, describing it as guidance that treats stablecoin collateral “akin to a money market” with a “2% haircut.” Haas said this type of clarity could support broader adoption, particularly for 24/7 markets where stablecoins function as a “critical payment leg” for tokenized products.
Tokenization was presented as a key next regulatory pillar. Haas said Coinbase has been actively meeting with the SEC and cited “30 meetings in the last year” focused on rules around tokenized securities. She differentiated “real tokenized securities” from derivative-like products trading abroad and emphasized Coinbase’s interest in tokenized equities that can be used interoperably with DeFi protocols.
“Everything Exchange”: expanding assets, products, and custody
Haas said Coinbase’s strategy is centered on expanding both the ways customers transact and the breadth of assets available on the platform. She outlined a progression from spot crypto into derivatives, describing derivatives as Coinbase’s “second pillar of trading.” She said Coinbase introduced “24/7 perpetual style futures” in the U.S. last year and has seen significant growth, including doubling trading volume year-over-year in both market share and total notional, driven by derivatives.
Haas also discussed the company’s acquisition of Deribit, calling it the crypto options market leader and describing it as a major step in broadening product depth. She said Coinbase now aims to offer multiple “pillars” of asset types side-by-side and, over time, bring those assets on-chain.
Recent launches discussed included:
- Equities trading: Haas said Coinbase rolled out equities trading to all retail holders in recent weeks. While she said it was too early to provide statistics, she described early engagement as encouraging. She also noted a partnership with Yahoo, enabling users to research a stock on Yahoo and “click through to Coinbase” to purchase it.
- Prediction markets: Haas said the product is integrated into the main Coinbase app, with Coinbase currently partnering with Clear Street as an introducing broker that routes activity to Clear Street’s platform. She said it was too early for adoption metrics and that the near-term focus is product iteration for existing customers before using it as a marketing-driven acquisition channel.
- Coinbase One: Haas said Coinbase One has grown to nearly 1 million paid subscribers. She highlighted new benefits rolled out last year, including a Coinbase One credit card with rewards of “up to 4% Bitcoin” on spending and gating USDC rewards behind Coinbase One membership. Haas described these benefits as creating a flywheel of deeper engagement, including holding USDC, earning rewards, and increased likelihood to trade, diversify, and stake.
Haas also discussed Coinbase’s application for an OCC charter, saying it would provide federal jurisdiction for its custody business and allow the company to custody more assets “under one license.” She said Coinbase currently custodies over 12% of overall crypto market cap and more than twice the nearest competitor the company can identify.
Institutional roadmap and developer “rails”
For institutional clients, Haas described the “Everything Exchange” roadmap as “stocking the shelves” with integrated products, with a key priority being Deribit integration so options can be offered alongside perpetual futures and spot crypto. She said a core institutional objective is deeper liquidity and cross-margining to enable more capital-efficient trading.
Haas also described Coinbase’s developer platform and white-label offerings, positioning Coinbase as infrastructure for banks and fintechs. She said Coinbase has won 80% of ETF custody so far and is white-labeling tools including custody and exchange access, enabling institutions to offer crypto trading to end users. Haas said Coinbase works with five G-SIBs and “over 250” fintechs and corporates building on its developer toolkits, with monetization flowing through tiered, volume-based institutional pricing.
Stablecoins, capital allocation, and AI initiatives
Haas called stablecoins a “digital dollar,” emphasizing global, cheap, fast transactions and self-custody. While acknowledging sensitivity to interest rates, she argued the larger trend is money moving to lower-friction rails, with tokenization and delivery-versus-payment (DVP) needs supporting stablecoin growth. Haas also cited an “all-time high in Base transactions” driven by agentic commerce and payments use cases.
On competitive dynamics, Haas said the market is in a “fragmentation era” for both protocols and stablecoins, and that long-term winners will be driven by network effects, liquidity, and regulatory compliance (including U.S. requirements and MiCA in the EU). She added that Coinbase supports sharing rewards as part of building those network effects.
On capital allocation, Haas said Coinbase commits to being EBITDA positive in all operating environments and allocates a percentage of operating income to ongoing Bitcoin purchases, describing the approach as weekly dollar-cost averaging. For share repurchases, she said the company’s buybacks are intended to offset dilution and be opportunistic during price dislocations. Haas said Coinbase bought $1.7 billion of stock through mid-February (between Q4 and mid-February) and that the board authorized an additional $2 billion for opportunistic use and to offset future dilution.
Haas said Coinbase closed 10 acquisitions last year, with Deribit as the largest and Echo as the second-largest, alongside smaller deals including acqui-hires. She described Deribit as an example of a “1 + 1 equals 3” transaction, citing post-acquisition volume growth, improved counterparty perception from institutions due to Coinbase’s balance sheet, and both revenue and cost synergies.
On AI, Haas said Coinbase now expects AI proficiency in hiring and is encouraging “bottoms-up” adoption where teams automate their own processes. She cited progress in consumer and compliance support, including on-chain transaction monitoring and support queues that are “80%-90%” handled by agents in some areas, and institutional onboarding workflows where agents digest client information for compliance and onboarding decisions.
She also addressed quantum computing risk, saying Coinbase has formed a research team to monitor and contribute to protocol updates, while noting it is not the company’s top concern today.
Looking out five to 10 years, Haas said investors often focus too much on near-term volatility and miss the longer-term trend of assets moving on-chain. She reiterated her view that “we’re going to tokenize everything” and that, over time, the technology will become “chain native” and largely invisible to users—similar to how markets no longer talk about physical stock certificates.
About Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN)
Coinbase Global, Inc is a U.S.-based company that operates one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms. Founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam and headquartered in San Francisco, Coinbase provides technology and infrastructure to buy, sell, store and use a broad range of digital assets. The company became a public company through a direct listing on the NASDAQ in April 2021 and offers services tailored to both retail and institutional customers.
Coinbase’s product portfolio includes its consumer trading platform, a self-custody mobile wallet, and institutional services such as custody, prime brokerage and execution tools.
