Coinbase Global Inc

Coinbase Global is relaunching Coinbase Pro with Deribit integration as part of a unified Coinbase Global Exchange. The revamped Coinbase Pro will combine U.S. and international crypto derivatives, including options and perpetual futures, under one regulated platform. Institutional clients are expected to see consolidated spot and derivatives trading with shared liquidity and centralised risk management tools. The relaunch connects one of the deepest crypto options venues into Coinbase's existing institutional stack, from Prime to the new CFTC cleared Coinbase Clearing LLC scope. The test now is how quickly Coinbase reports take-up of Deribit options and perpetuals through Coinbase Prime once the unified exchange is live, and whether derivatives share of total transaction volume is broken out and starts to carry more weight in quarterly updates over the next few earnings cycles.

Agentic commerce is fragmenting across infrastructure layers, with control over the checkout gate splitting rather than consolidating even as 89% of merchants prepare for autonomous agents while only 3% of transactions currently involve them, according to the Checkout.com 2026 report. Merchants are reclaiming protocol-level control: Shopify recently implemented robots.txt restrictions to block AI crawlers from checkout and cart paths, the first major eCommerce platform to draw the line at the protocol level, while Amazon has blocked Meta Muse agent checkouts over unauthorized access and credential capture concerns, as GeekWire reported. Only 11% of SMBs are currently agent-ready per PYMNTS/Visa data, and just 28% of merchants are willing to offer agents their full product range. Settlement infrastructure is maturing in parallel, with Moody's issuing its first-ever stablecoin protocol rating, the Citi-Coinbase collaboration wiring its $6 trillion payment network to stablecoins, and SAP Pay stablecoin settlement embedded directly in its ERP software. The liability framework remains unallocated, however: PYMNTS Intelligence data shows 93% of merchants believe AI providers should bear the financial loss for agent errors, yet no clear mechanism exists, and Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller, speaking at Sibos, named authentication, liability, and fraud as the three binding challenges while framing the open-versus-closed choice as the variable that could significantly influence how market structure evolves. Walmart pilot data showed conversion rates roughly three times lower for direct agent checkouts than for click-out flows, according to Walmart executive Daniel Danker, first reported by Wired.

Coinbase Global is expanding its stablecoin distribution through a partnership with Samsung that will bring USD Coin to Samsung Wallet users in the United States, with the service expected to launch in the last week of October 2026 and USDC as the default dollar stablecoin. Coinbase will provide subcustody through Coinbase Prime, alongside licensed infrastructure partner Bastion. The company said average USDC balances held in Coinbase products reached a record $20 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 44% year over year, with more than 30% of circulating USDC held in Coinbase products at quarter-end. Coinbase cautioned that greater adoption will not automatically translate into higher earnings, since the financial impact will depend on customer activity, transaction volumes, operating costs and revenue-sharing arrangements. Among competitors, PayPal Holdings is broadening the reach of its PYUSD stablecoin through its consumer and merchant network, while Circle Internet Group announced a partnership with Tereina on Oct. 7, 2026 to integrate USDC and EURC into enterprise workflows starting with the SAP ecosystem. Shares of Coinbase have lost 55.5% in the past year compared with the industry decline of 27.9%, and the stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 74.44 against an industry average of 15.11.

The architecture for institutional stablecoins effectively locked into place between October 6 and October 8, 2026, as five distinct infrastructure layers shipped simultaneously to satisfy the requirements of the GENIUS Act. The reserve layer is now a functional duopoly of the JPMorgan JLTXX fund, holding $733.7 million in assets under management, and the BlackRock BSTBL parent fund, backed by a $6.1 billion parent fund, because the GENIUS Act's 40% concentration limit on any single tokenized reserve asset forces issuers to use both. Above the reserves, SAP Pay has been embedded into SAP Cloud ERP, supporting USDC and EURC across 89 corridors and reaching approximately 400,000 customers. The credit layer gained the first-ever stablecoin protocol rating from Moody's, which assigned a B3 rating to the Sky Protocol alongside an S&P B- rating, defining a 0.9% capital ratio and upgrade and downgrade thresholds. On the merchant side, Citi connected its $6 trillion payment network to Coinbase stablecoin rails, covering 150 million cardholders with a 3.75% platform incentive. These layers feed four settlement rails: SoFi and Mastercard, Visa's $20 billion annualized volume, Stripe's expansion across more than 100 countries, and Solana's delivery-versus-payment capabilities. The urgency stems from the January 18, 2027, effective date of the GENIUS Act, with seven federal agencies having failed to meet their July 2026 rulemaking obligations, while a survey by the American Bankers Association and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors found 18% of community banks plan to launch tokenized deposits within 12 months and 60% expect to lose ground to the new stablecoin rails.

Citi and Coinbase announced an expanded collaboration on September 28, 2026 to bridge traditional fiat and digital asset rails for corporate and consumer clients, a partnership first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Under the arrangement, Coinbase Virtual Accounts powered by Citi's Virtual Account Wallet convert incoming fiat into stablecoins automatically, with Coinbase offering a 3.75% annual yield on those balances that is a platform incentive, not a product of the stablecoin issuer, and explicitly not FDIC-insured. Separately, Spring by Citi, the bank's integrated payment acceptance platform, will let institutional clients accept stablecoin payments at checkout, with Coinbase Payments handling the blockchain transaction and Citi converting the digital currency to fiat as bank of record. Citi processes approximately $6 trillion in daily payment volume, banks 90 percent of the top eCommerce companies, and counts 15 of the world's 20 largest FinTechs as clients, and the partnership allows merchants to serve over 150 million stablecoin holders globally without holding, custodying, or managing digital assets directly. The GENIUS Act, enacted July 18, 2025, requires every permitted payment stablecoin issuer to maintain one-to-one reserves using eligible assets by January 18, 2027, and Citi said it is also developing its own stablecoin and plans to launch a tokenized deposit system next year alongside crypto custody services.

Coinbase will serve as the powering exchange for USDC as the default dollar stablecoin on Samsung Wallet for U.S. users beginning in the final week of October 2026, the company announced Thursday. USDC balances will be custodied by Coinbase Prime Vault. The move extends a partnership that began last July, when Coinbase added Samsung Pay as a payment option to make it easier for users to buy crypto in the Coinbase app. In October, Coinbase extended that partnership to more than 82 million Galaxy users in the US, with Coinbase One benefits offered directly inside Samsung Wallet.

The U.S. government has transferred roughly $565.87 million in seized cryptocurrency to Coinbase Prime over the span of a few hours, according to the blockchain analytics platform Onchain Lens. Onchain Lens reported the movement, which involved funds the government had previously seized. The transfer was completed within a short window of just a few hours. Neither the specific assets involved nor the reason for the move was disclosed in the report.

The protocol stack for autonomous agent-to-merchant commerce is now effectively complete, but merchant adoption remains fractured and consumer trust lags far behind the infrastructure. Four layers now underpin machine-led spending: the Stripe Machine Payments Protocol, launched in March 2026, provides a programmable policy layer for stablecoin, fiat, and BNPL transactions; the Google Universal Commerce Protocol set an open standard for agentic commerce in January 2026; and by June 2026 Mastercard launched Agent Pay for Machines with more than 30 launch partners including Adyen, Coinbase, and Stripe. Capital flows have surged alongside these rails, with Visa stablecoin settlement reaching an annualized $20 billion by September 2026, a 15x increase year-over-year, while Stripe stablecoin card volume hit $1.2 billion in the same month. Merchants, however, have split into three incompatible postures: QVC has integrated agents into its supply chain and catalog distribution, sending catalogs to OpenAI and Google; Kate Spade lets agents browse inventory but blocks them at the point of purchase, citing fraud and inventory management risks; and Amazon and eBay have moved to block AI agents entirely, even as Shopify makes Muse the default agent interface for consumers. The core barrier is trust rather than technology, with an NMI survey finding that only 3% of US adults trust AI agents to complete purchases on their behalf, and the VML Tomorrow's Commerce 2026 report showing one-third of active AI users refuse to authorize agents to spend their money. The bottleneck has thus shifted from the protocol layer to the trust layer, leaving a high-capacity system operating at a fraction of its potential throughput.

Coinbase has completed its integration of Deribit, the world's largest crypto options exchange, which it acquired for about $2.9 billion, creating Coinbase Global Exchange, the first and only crypto exchange with a unified global liquidity pool. Liz Martin, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, announced the completion of the integration at Token2049 in Singapore, saying the new exchange brings US and international customers into one place and combines the company's US retail base with its international base alongside an upgrade of its professional trading tools, Coinbase Advanced. Martin said Coinbase is launching spot margin and options for pro traders in a unified portfolio offering maximum buying power and lower fees, and that the company has "super ambitious" volume growth plans. She said Coinbase is diversifying revenue through an "everything exchange" that now includes equities, equity options, perpetual futures, pre-IPOs, commodities and prediction markets, and that the company announced last week a clearing platform for prediction markets in the US along with intentions to launch its own prediction markets. On tokenization, Martin said Coinbase recently launched tokenized equities for customers outside the US, giving holders the same shareholder rights as actual stock ownership, and cited a survey finding that about 60% of its institutional clients are excited about tokenization and investing in tokenized assets. She said Coinbase sees the APAC region as a major growth area, having opened a new headquarters in Singapore about two months ago and acquired licenses in Australia and India.

Coinbase Global Inc. CEO Brian Armstrong said Citigroup Inc. is partnering with Coinbase to enable stablecoin payments for large institutional clients, calling the tie-up a milestone for the cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2012. Under the partnership, Citi's institutional clients, including multinational corporations, will be able to accept stablecoin payments from customers at checkout through the bank's merchant-processing services, while Coinbase customers can use Citi's banking capabilities and automatically convert incoming cash into stablecoins. Armstrong said that when he started Coinbase, getting a bank to work with the company at all was nearly impossible, and thanked Citi for the partnership. Stablecoins are a key and rapidly growing component of Coinbase's revenue; the company shares interest income on the reserve assets backing USDC with Circle Internet Group Inc. and monetizes customer balances held on the platform. USDC held in Coinbase products reached an all-time high of $20 billion in the second quarter, accounting for more than 30% of all USDC in circulation.

Metaplanet acquired former Siiibo Securities, which handles privately placed corporate bonds, for 210 million yen and changed its name to Metaplanet Securities in July; the subsidiary securities firm recounted the two months leading up to the acquisition. On September 29, the Financial Services Agency announced it would support a pilot program using stablecoins for trade settlement, with six companies participating: TradeWaltz, NTT Data, Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking. On September 28, Coinbase announced on X that it will soon offer a service allowing users to open Pokémon card packs on smartphones. On October 2, Metaplanet corrected a total of four documents including previously filed annual securities reports, revising a statement that CEO Simon Gerovich indirectly holds a majority of voting rights in shareholder MMXX Ventures Limited to clarify that he does not hold a majority. On September 30, KDDI, au Coincheck Digital Assets, and HashPort announced they will begin offering the crypto asset wallet αU wallet as a mini app within the au PAY app.

The OUSD stablecoin has officially gone live with Visa, Mastercard and Stripe behind it, according to Scott Melker on "The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker." OUSD, or Open USD, is a consortium of fintechs and payment companies launching their own stablecoin to compete in a massive market where high interest rates generate essentially free money, and it is being run by Stripe, which acquired Bridge in a unicorn deal and whose Bridge CEO is also running the blockchain. The stablecoin is launching on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with the bulk of liquidity expected on Stripe's own Tempo blockchain, while reserves will be held at BlackRock, BNY and Lead Bank. Five founding members — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — will split the equity and have invested a billion dollars for initial liquidity, and depending on usage they will accrue more or less equity or earnings from the stablecoin, meaning earnings accrue to the companies promoting and using it rather than to a private company behind it. The launch follows a huge debate when it was announced, as 140 logos appeared including BlackRock and others, and some companies said they had never heard of it and had not gotten the memo.

Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise, said that the failure of the Clarity Act draft to advance in the Senate on September 15, by a vote of 49 in favor to 50 against, actually sent the crypto market higher, with Bitcoin rising nearly 11% and Ether up about 12%, while smaller tokens posted far larger gains. Hougan explained that the market may not have gotten clarity from federal-level legislation, but it also avoided a compromise deal that would have held back a major part of the industry, leaving regulators such as the SEC and CFTC to step in with measures he sees as more beneficial than the bill itself. For example, the final version of the bill would have barred platforms from paying interest or yield on stablecoin balances, but when the bill stalled, exchanges such as Coinbase were able to keep offering yields under the existing GENIUS Act framework. Meanwhile, the SEC issued a five-year innovation exemption just days after the vote, allowing limited trading of tokenized U.S. equities through blockchain-based platforms, and SEC staff also provided additional guidance in the past week for projects that buy back their own tokens. Hougan also warned of the risk that a future government could change direction at points where Congress has not locked regulation into law, but for now he said crypto has given up long-term clarity and gotten better regulation, and faster too.

Coinbase Global and Citi announced new fiat and stablecoin interoperability features linking Citi's banking rails with Coinbase infrastructure. Citi's Virtual Account Wallet for Coinbase will automatically convert client fiat balances into stablecoins and convert incoming stablecoins back into fiat. Merchants using Citi's Spring platform will be able to accept stablecoin payments while keeping settlement within Citi's regulated banking system. The Citi Virtual Account Wallet and Spring stablecoin rollout gives only a first glimpse of how far this Coinbase bank bridge could reach. The partnership plugs Coinbase's stablecoin and payments stack directly into a large commercial bank's cash management and merchant platforms, supporting Coinbase Global's effort to lean more on subscription style and service revenue rather than depending only on trading activity and market volumes.

Coinbase announced on September 28 that it has received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to register as a derivatives clearing organization. Its subsidiary, Coinbase Clearing, became the first clearinghouse authorized to use USDC as collateral. Coinbase already holds Coinbase Financial Markets as a futures commission merchant and Coinbase Derivatives as a designated contract market, and with this approval it now has a structure that allows it to handle all three registrations, including clearing, entirely in-house. Coinbase is the first cryptocurrency company to hold all three major CFTC registrations. Coinbase Clearing will support clearing of fully collateralized futures, futures options, and swaps, enabling 24-hour settlement with USDC collateral. Clearing of leveraged products will continue to be handled through external clearing partners. Molly Abraham, Coinbase's head of legal, said, "With this CFTC approval, Coinbase's derivatives foundation is now complete end to end, and we can bring even more regulated products to market with USDC collateral and 24-hour settlement."

U.S. financial giant Citi announced on September 28 that it has launched Citi Token Services, a corporate-facing service using tokenized deposits, in Japan and the United Arab Emirates. In Japan the service supports U.S. dollars, allowing Japanese clients to move funds almost instantly, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to their own accounts or other clients' accounts in supported regions such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore. This makes transfers less dependent on bank cut-off times, holidays and time differences, and is expected to ease the burden of pre-positioning funds at overseas locations. Tokenized deposits are bank deposits converted into a form that can be transferred on a blockchain; they are backed by deposits and processed on a permissioned blockchain managed by Citi. Using the service requires no new bank account or crypto wallet, and clients can instruct transfers using their existing accounts and online banking without having to hold tokens directly. With the launch in Japan and the UAE, the service is now available in seven markets: the United States, Ireland, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Japan and the UAE. According to Citi, the value of transactions processed through the service runs into the billions of dollars. Citi also said the same day that it is expanding its partnership with Coinbase, enabling Citi's corporate clients in the United States to accept stablecoin payments and settle in fiat currency.

Coinbase, the major U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, announced on X on September 28 that it will soon offer a service allowing users to open Pokémon card packs on their smartphones. Cards pulled on screen are backed by real physical copies, and users can choose either to store the cards in a vault or have the physical items shipped to their home or elsewhere. The company did not disclose the launch date, eligible regions, pricing, or how cards will be authenticated. Behind the move is the expansion of the market for buying and selling trading cards as collectibles and assets. According to the Japan Toy Association, the domestic card game and trading card market is expected to reach 338.4 billion yen in fiscal 2025, expanding for eight consecutive years since fiscal 2017. The announcement did not indicate whether card ownership will be recorded on a blockchain or whether NFTs will be issued, nor did it clarify the existence of a secondary market, any partnership with The Pokémon Company, or how the products will be procured.

U.S. financial giant Citi and U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced on the 28th that they will expand their collaboration in the payments business. The expanded partnership has two main pillars. The first is that Coinbase will use Citi's Banking-as-a-Service offering to provide "virtual accounts," with a key feature being the ability to automatically convert deposited fiat currency into stablecoins. The second is an initiative to enable Citi's customers to accept stablecoin payments through its payment acceptance platform Spring by Citi, with Coinbase's payment services supporting this and making it possible to automatically convert digital currency into fiat currency under Citi's payments. Ashish Bajaj, head of Citi's North America services division, commented that the goal is to build next-generation payment infrastructure that can seamlessly interoperate across both traditional and digital-era payment methods and payment networks. The collaboration announced this time is planned to be implemented first in the United States, and the two companies said they intend to roll out new features over the coming months.

Crypto asset manager Bitwise filed a Form 8-A registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on September 24 for its spot NEAR ETF, the Bitwise NEAR ETF, to list on NYSE Arca. The registration statement, including the prospectus, was filed on September 16, the NYSE Arca listing has already been approved, and Coinbase will serve as custodian. The management fee is 0.75% per year, the ticker is NRR, and trading is expected to begin around September 29. The spot NEAR ETF is backed by the token of the layer-1 blockchain NEAR Protocol and is notable for a structure that incorporates rewards from staking the entire holdings into the fund's returns, and several overseas media outlets report that NRR will be the first spot NEAR ETF in the United States. Bitwise listed a spot HYPE ETF on the NYSE in May, and its spot Solana ETF surpassed 1 billion dollars in assets under management at the end of August, while in September it closed its spot Dogecoin ETF less than a year after listing. NEAR stood at 5.25 dollars as of September 28, up about 21% over the past week.

On September 17, the SEC approved a temporary framework for trading tokenized US equities, called the Innovation Exemption, potentially giving Coinbase Global a new avenue to expand its Everything Exchange beyond crypto. Baird reiterated a Neutral rating on Coinbase with a $130 price target, saying the change could let the company offer tokenized stocks and bring its asset mix closer to Robinhood Markets. Coinbase is not starting from scratch: in June it announced plans to introduce tokenized US stocks for eligible non-US customers, and the product went live on Base in August, initially covering mega-cap names including Apple, Nvidia, and Alphabet, with tokens issued by Coinbase and backed 1:1 by the underlying assets. The SEC's permission is temporary, lasting five years, and conditional on tokenized stocks providing the same rights and privileges as the underlying shares, so Coinbase must satisfy those conditions, adapt its international tokenization infrastructure to the US market, and demonstrate enough domestic demand to meaningfully boost results. In Q2, 88% of Coinbase's net revenue came from non-Bitcoin spot trading, while prediction market contracts and revenue increased 106% quarter over quarter; hedge funds holding the stock fell to 62 in Q2 from 65 in Q1, though Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management raised its stake 6% to about 2.5 million shares and Southpoint Capital Advisors lifted its position 50% to nearly 1 million shares, while short interest stood at 12.5% of the float as of August 31.

Coinbase's tokenized US equities have crossed $1 billion in decentralized exchange volume on its Base network in roughly one month, a milestone the Base team announced on X on September 19, 2026, though the figure is vendor-sourced data from Base itself and the volume is strictly for non-US persons. The activity validates the B20 standard, a native ERC-20-compatible format launched on August 24, 2026 and built on Rust precompiles to handle compliance policies and pausable functions; tokenized stock spot DEX volume on Base has surged approximately 830% month-over-month, with Aerodrome, the Base-native DEX, accounting for roughly 85% of that activity, or about $852.7 million. Coinbase's model relies on direct 1:1 share ownership through Alpaca Securities as a regulated broker-custodian under the Abu Dhabi Global Market framework, giving token holders actual shareholder rights including dividends and voting, subject to eligibility, and it launched with DeFi integrations from day one including Aave, Morpho, Euler, 0x, 1inch, CoW Swap, and Wasabi. The SEC issued an Innovation Exemption, Press Release 2026-90, on September 17, 2026, a five-year conditional relief for tokenized NMS stocks that unlocks the US market provided tokenized stocks offer the same rights as the underlying securities and trading venues operate under permissioned access with OFAC compliance, and Coinbase Institutional said the framework to bring the same regulated onchain market infrastructure onshore just got clearer. Coinbase is not first to tokenize equities: Kraken's xStocks boasts $25 billion in cumulative volume, largely centralized-exchange-matched rather than on-chain DEX volume, Ondo Global Markets holds a $638 million total value locked and roughly a 58% share of the issuer market, and Binance's bStocks has reached $610 million in assets under management in just two months, while the total tokenized public equities market now sits at approximately $2.48 billion. Chainlink Data Feeds provide the pricing backbone with 24/5 continuous feeds, a 0.5% deviation threshold and 24-hour heartbeats reporting Total Return Values that account for dividends, even as Nasdaq, NYSE, and Cboe push back against tokenized equities over liquidity fragmentation and degraded price discovery during the 16 hours of overnight trading that on-chain markets enable, and SIFMA pushes for formal SEC rulemaking rather than exemptions.

Coinbase is working to become the world's first "everything exchange," according to John D'Agostino, head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional. D'Agostino said the company is "all over tokenization" and has announced the launch of its tokenization model out of Abu Dhabi, with the aim of eventually giving US investors access to it. The tokenization model is one-to-one backed by the actual equity and will afford traditional rights to token holders, he said. Coinbase also announced that its US retail customers can participate in IPOs, part of the push to offer whatever people want in one centralized location while using blockchain and crypto rails where possible. D'Agostino pointed to the SEC's innovation exemption, noting that ETFs were granted hundreds of such exemptions in their early days and that it is very hard for industries to grow without them.

The GENIUS Act's Section 4(a)(11), enacted in July 2025, now explicitly bars permitted stablecoin issuers from paying holders any interest or yield tied to holding tokens, locking in a business model built on reserve income the issuers keep entirely. Tether, issuer of USDT, ranks as the 17th-largest holder of US Treasuries globally with approximately $141 billion in direct and indirect Treasury exposure as of Q1 2026, per its BDO Italia attestation, while Morgan Stanley projects stablecoin issuers could collectively hold $1.2 trillion in US Treasuries by 2030. Circle's FY2025 SEC 10-K showed $2.75 billion in total revenue, of which $2.64 billion, or 96%, came from reserve income, yet the company still posted a $70 million net loss as distribution costs reached $1.66 billion, including approximately $1.36 billion to Coinbase and a $152.1 million increase attributable to Binance. Tether, lacking a partner on Coinbase's scale, retains roughly 3.0 to 3.5 cents per dollar annually versus Circle's 0.8 to 1.0 cents, posting $13 billion in net profit in 2024 and $1.04 billion in Q1 2026 with excess reserves of $8.23 billion. In September 2026 Circle sold $100 million in equity to Binance, 1,237,011 Class A shares at $80.84 per share, a 5% discount, alongside a five-year agreement paying Binance a monthly incentive fee on USDC held through Circle's Modular Smart Contract Wallet infrastructure, as the January 18, 2027 enforcement cliff approaches with Tether holding roughly 60% market dominance and Circle at 24%.

Coinbase Global has introduced enterprise-scale, fixed-rate Bitcoin-backed loans using the Morpho protocol for on-chain lending, alongside a post-quantum security architecture designed to harden its Bitcoin custody against future quantum computing threats. The fixed-rate loans target institutional borrowers seeking predictable on-chain financing terms rather than variable-rate crypto credit arrangements. The company said the two initiatives are only one part of its broader crypto infrastructure push, feeding directly into its role as an infrastructure provider for institutional clients that want more predictable and security-focused crypto services. The early tell for investors will be whether Coinbase starts disclosing specific metrics around Morpho-based loan balances, institutional borrower adoption and quantum-ready custody features in upcoming quarterly updates, instead of leaving these initiatives as purely technical announcements.

Roundtable, trading on Nasdaq as RTB, announced that its DeFi and AI reporting and payment platform is now live, settling advertising payments in real time with USDC through smart wallets linked to journalists' Coinbase accounts. The platform is integrated with Roundtable's Media Liquidity Pool and combines Coinbase's USDC payment infrastructure with RTB's enterprise Web3 mediaOS and AI-driven smart wallet system, requiring no human intermediary. Roundtable recently announced a ten-year contract to migrate 21 major media brands, hundreds of journalists, and nearly 100 million viewers consuming $100 million in advertising from a Web1 platform with manual fiat payments that can take 90 days or more onto its Web3, AI-driven Media OS and DeFi payment platform. The platform is already live in the U.S. with hundreds of journalists and tracks and clears trillions of AI-monitored bids through dynamic DeFi smart wallets. Following the North American announcement, the integration is being unveiled to the British press this week, led by former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who joined Roundtable's Board of Directors on September 18th, with CEO James Heckman offering major media brands the platform at no cost as part of a premium media coalition for European press. RTB's Nasdaq-listed shares began trading on Coinbase as of today's opening.

Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev said crypto-linked event contracts are already taking a disproportionate share of prediction-market activity and that sports will eventually represent a minority of that business. The shift matters because sports contracts sit at the center of Robinhood's regulatory challenges: Missouri recently ordered the company and other operators to stop offering sports event contracts without a state sports-wagering license, Robinhood is appealing litigation in Michigan, and the Ninth Circuit in August affirmed the denial of preliminary relief in its Nevada case, prompting the company to petition the U.S. Supreme Court. Prediction markets have become financially material for Robinhood, with event-contract revenues surging more than tenfold year over year to 156 million dollars in the second quarter of 2026 and contracts traded jumping more than tenfold to a record 13.6 billion. In June, Robinhood began routing event contracts to Rothera, a CFTC-licensed exchange and clearinghouse independently managed through its joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, which accounted for 17 million dollars of second-quarter event-contract revenues. Competition is building as Interactive Brokers has created a unified prediction-market interface spanning Kalshi, CME Group and its ForecastEx platform, while Coinbase's offering, launched with Kalshi-sourced contracts, saw prediction-market contracts and revenues rise 106% sequentially in the second quarter.

Crypto exchange Coinbase revealed by September 22 that it is developing a crypto custody system capable of supporting any post-quantum signature scheme blockchains may adopt in the future, in preparation for the risk of quantum computers cracking encryption. Yehuda Lindell, the company's head of cryptography, explained this in a video interview with the Mara Foundation. The company is upgrading its current custody infrastructure, which uses multi-party computation, so that it can withstand attacks by quantum computers, and is also considering an alternative approach using specialized devices called hardware security modules in case a signature scheme is adopted that multi-party computation cannot handle. According to the Mara Foundation, the company protects roughly 250 billion dollars' worth of digital assets centered on this system. On July 23, Coinbase explained on its official blog that its current key management system, CoreKMS, protects about 99.9 percent of its custodied assets, and that it is also developing a quantum-resistant version, PQ-CoreKMS, with plans to build an automated infrastructure within one year that can securely sign while distributing keys across multiple locations. Over the following two to three years, it aims to develop multi-party computation that does not require generating a complete private key even for quantum-resistant signatures.