BlockBeats News, March 7th, Coinbase’s institutional service platform will integrate with futures broker Coinbase Financial Markets regulated by the CFTC to provide 24/7 trading of over 20 futures contracts. The announcement also includes the introduction of “perpetual” futures through Coinbase Derivatives—following the competition for the derivatives market by crypto-native exchanges at the end of last year, Coinbase has expanded its perpetual contracts product line.
Derivatives typically account for 70%-75% of the total crypto trading volume. This move comes as Coinbase strengthens its OTC brokerage service, aiming to become a one-stop institutional service provider covering custody, risk management, financing, lending, and trade execution.
Coinbase started calling itself a “universal exchange” last year, announcing plans to expand into mature markets such as stock trading and emerging areas like tokenization and prediction markets. Last month, the exchange launched stock trading services nationwide. Companies like FalconX, Bitgo, DCG, among others, have been competing for years to develop full-stack OTC brokerage services. As a NYDFS-regulated qualified custodian, Coinbase claims to manage 12% of the total crypto market value and is building a service ecosystem around these assets.
The unified cross-margin feature between spot and derivatives allows trading to “mutually evaluate risk exposure in the same portfolio framework,” streamlining and expanding portfolio management. Cross-margin enables traders to use the entire account balance as shared collateral for positions, whereas previously, spot and futures trading required separate collateral pools and risk systems. Coinbase points out that this will enhance the capital efficiency of hedging strategies while helping exchanges manage risk exposure, collateral, and margin requirements.
