Coinbase's 2026 ambition: covering all exchanges, all distribution layers
This is Charlie, formerEncrypted currency unicorn Strike Vice President (participating)El Salvador Bitcoin Act, responsible for Latin American Bitcoin and Stabilisation Currency Payments), trillion-dollar fund Franklin Templeton Macro Analyst, early member of the global payment giant Adyen North America. There are now a number of listed companies, start-ups and investment agencies acting as encrypted currency strategy advisers。
I didn't want to write another one before the end of the year, but Corinbase had too many bright spots at the "System Update" launch yesterday, and he hesitated or decided to do it again。
I wrote it this yearRobinhood vs Coinbase: Differentiated competition for the next generation of Wall StreetI've had a lot of discussion on my friend's podcastRobinhod vs Coinbase, who will be the winner of a new generation of financial technology in a new wave of currency stock integrationI don't know. Both of them are Gen-Z's favorite finance app, but the war is getting more complicated。
The launch published a series of new product functions: stocks, forecast markets, lasting contracts, plugging Base and Solana long-tailed assets directly into the DEX portal of the Coinbase main App, payments and receipts for businesses, AI investment advisers, plus Base App, which is packaged as a global chain “everything app”, content monetizable, tradable and a new platform for creators。
This update is not just a stack of functions, it's an enhancement“Distribution level”Role– Turn yourself into something more like a one-stop financial compliance product with more distribution portals so that the monetization of finance takes place in its interface, even if the bottom chains, assets and even the exchange are not all Coinbase。
Finance looks like a technology war. It is actually a distribution war. Technology and products are of course critical, but profits are usually the sameUser intelligence and viscosity from the card slot- When you decide to buy, sell, borrow, pay, you don't want to switch to App。
Retail: It's deliberately blurring its borders with Robinwood
Coinbase's slogan is plain: “Everything Exchange”. The most similar move is to put US stock trading in the main App, to put encryption and stock in the same account view, to buy stock directly with USD or USDC, and to add "zero commission, 24/5" to the typical retail-friendly narrative of "Robinhood."。
It's functional, it's moving towards Robinwood. As the largest category of financial assets in the retail market, equities are the subject of competition to become the leading intellectual product of the C client。
Besides, Coinbase didn't just go to stock, it went to another kind of something closer to the focus asset -- the fire this yearForecasting markets。All market flows are projected to come from Kalshi during the start-up phase. Instead of building everything (for the time being), it is embedding in a compliance, mature back end, holding the front door firmly in hand。
it's typical of europe and americaI don't knowStripe/Adyen also started with the payment of the gateway and was the path that Robinhood had tested。
Forecast market: Kalshi is not a function, it is a “compulsory distribution of weapons”
The market is forecast to burst this year, and the contrast is often mentioned by Polymarket vs Kalshi. It appears to be a competition between products and mobility pools, but from a distribution point of view, Kalshi ' s differential competition is that it is easier to embed in large platforms。
Kalshi stressed that he was a contract market under the supervision of the CTC. Polymarket, the dilemma in the United States is caught in compliance, the closer it is to the highest-quality customer base (the stock of large platforms, the KYC users), the harder it is to distribute。
That is why Kalshi’s distribution advantage is really on the ground: Coinbase does not need to win the “liquidity” indicator by predicting the market on the first day. What it needs is to turn the forecast market into a custom path embedded in an app that already holds the user balance and has completed the KYC。
More frankly, like Robinwood, Coinbase wants to take over the first moment of the user. Sports, elections, data, policies, climate, cultural hot spots - These are events that can be socially transmitted and those that can most easily turn attention to transactions。
It's as dangerous as addiction, but it's also because it's dangerous, so it's a distribution face。
IN ADDITION, THERE IS A SECOND-TIER EFFECT THAT IS EASILY IGNORED: PREDICTING MARKETS BRINGS NOT ONLY TRANSACTIONS BUT ALSO DATA. IT IS CLOSER TO “QUANTIFIABLE EMOTIONS” THAN SOCIAL MEDIA, CAPTURES NARRATIVES MORE QUICKLY THAN NEWS, AND IS MORE LIKELY TO BE TRANSLATED BY AI PRODUCTS INTO NEXT STEPS FOR USERS。
SoWhen you place an AI Advisor in the App at the same time, these data are not just traffic, but an enforceable intention input。
Chains and assets: winning more trust outside Base
Coinbase bets for two years, Base tastes sweet, and it's going to keep going. But one of the key gestures of this update is to drag Solana into the same discovery and trade in long-term assetsDEX PORTALDistribution stream。
On the surface, it's an upgrade of experience: there's no need to switch wallets, no need for complex cross-chain paths. At a deeper level, it responds to both pressures simultaneously。
The first one is "seeing."I don't know. "Coinbase will always favour his own chain?" It's a trust constraint. If you're gonna do everything Exchange, you can't make the user feel you're pushing from home, even if it's suspicious. Multi-chain convergence is the way to contain this suspicion。
The second is capture。Let the cycle be on the other side of the ecosystemlongtail assets, meme economy focus islandIt flows to Coinbase's own ecology, through its own cost, wind control, distribution system and cross-sales. Not "Coinbase becomes DeFi," but "Coinbase turns DeFi into its own bottom supply," or is it the logic of a distribution portal。
And the third is ProgressifThe Ether and Solana continue to fight for the narrative of Wall Street's preferred chainCoinbase, by including both sides in the distribution, is essentially promoting its strategic position as a “neutral entry point” -Whichever chain wins, it wants to be on its ownI don't know。
B2B: Stripe + Brex's ambition, a year's change
From the point of view of retail, Coinbase Business is increasingly positioned as a "one-stop business financial service": For start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises, a combination of accounts, payments, receipts, USDC revenues, compliance infrastructure, etc., is provided, as well as entry from mature key markets for financial services in enterprises such as the United States and Singapore。
For a year, evolution has been impressive from Coinbase Commerce to Coinbase Business。
It's helpful to use the "Stripe + Brex" analogy -- not that Coinbase will replace them, but it's a more complete B2B fintech service。
Stripe's strong point is "Orchestration". Brex's strength is “expenditure and fund management”. Coinbase is in the process of building a set of crypto-born business services: stable currency settlement, global payments, USDC fund management, and the placement of assets in the same account, receipts and disbursements, and possibly more tools in the future。
It's not just the SaaSization service of Coinbase Business that makes it stronger, it's the Modular CDP at the bottom -- and it implies that Coinbase wants to expand the client to "all App."。
Coinbase consolidates CDP capabilities into four pillars: hosting, payment, trading, currency stabilization. The translation is that any app can grow a wallet, pay, trade on the bottom of Coinbase。
and it's more like its continued bet on this new narrative:it wants to sit below the applied economy, not just as part of the crypto economy。
Stripe made money in the age of the electricians moving to API. And Coinbase in a new age of gambling:When payments, wallets, transactions are moved to stable currency tracks and chains, money flows along similar routes to infrastructure providers。
Identity and Attention: Base App is the answer to the post-SocialFi era
Coinbase says that Base App is already available in 140+ countries and describes it as an onchain everything app: socialization, transactions, payments, distribution, money-making mix, content monetization, tradable。
web2 has put value at the centre of value, and the creators tend to take wages, platform fees and inflation together。
Base App’s narrative is a16z web3 that's been preaching: if your work, influence, community relations are in the form of chain-based, primitive assets in your wallet, it has the potential to give creators a direct gain on future appreciation, rather than just a small amount of inflationary and currency overpayment from the platform。
But the difficulty is also real: a16z is not ideal for socialFi, based on the concept of web3; iconic projects like Farcaster are quenching in the direction of "prioritization of wallets" -- because pure socialization is less profitable, and wallets and assets go back。
In this context, the intention of Base App is clear: Coinbase is not going to do a better Instagram / TikTok, but is saying that the wallet is the new account and the information flow is the new asset detection mechanismSocial layers are subordinate to financial ones and asset-led distribution logicI don't know。
AI Advisor: It's glue and a risk amplifier
Coinbase Advisor turns the natural language intent into a portfolio and execution path and emphasizes that it is not autonomous - it does not automatically print out without user confirmation。
This is almost a necessary direction: when you put stocks, encryption, sustainability, forecasting markets, borrowing into an App, you have to reduce decision-making fatigue and strengthen detection mechanisms, using AI to support information gathering, analysis and decision-making. You can't ask ordinary users to be their own CIO, macro-researcher and vice control officer every day。At the strategic level, it is taking the “intent”。
But this could also be the best place in the future for the anti-water response: when an App is wearing stocks, sustainability, forecasting markets, social trades, AI recommendations, and the future of the countryIt will be judged by regulation and by the public on the "worst result" rather than on the "worst smooth experience."I DON'T KNOW. THE PHRASE “AI LETS ME ...” IS NATURAL ENOUGH TO BE A TOOL FOR FUTURE NEWS。
Coinbase can use the compliance structure to contain the risk as much as possible, but the goodwill risk remains and will be magnified as distribution expands。
So, Coinbase is becoming something
Put these together, Coinbase is more like a three-biting moat。
The first is the consumer screen: MULTI-ASSET TRANSACTIONS + HF FOCUS LOOP (FORECAST MARKET) + LONG-TAIL ASSET DISCOVERY (DEX AGGREGATE, SEAMLESS CROSS-CHAIN)InvestmentsI don't know。
Second is the business/developer baseWallet, stable currency payments, trading API, allowing other Apps to grow financial capacity on it, x 402 trying to write themselves into the default standard for next-generation paymentsAgreementsI don't know。
The third is identityBase App rubbing wallets, information streams, ownership in a distribution face, leaving the "content-trading-proceeds" closed。
In this framework, it's right to compare Robinwood, but not enough. Robinwood is just a retail distribution machine, and Coinbase wants to be:Retail distribution + commercial distribution + wallet/identity distribution。
There are great ambitions, but the constraints are clear:Regulation and trust。
Ultimately, the battle depends not on whether Coinbase can function, but on whether it can remain consistent with the experience under regulatory pressure — without being forced to break into a bunch of irreconcilable tabs. As long as it holds the coherence of the main screen, the distribution side will begin to strengthen itself。
