The American cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, announced yesterday, December 17, a significant expansion of its services. The main objective is to transform into a comprehensive financial platform. With this move, the company expands beyond trading, allowing users to manage digital assets and conventional finances under the same technical interface.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of the exchange, pointed outfrom the city of San Francisco, which the new offering already includes access to hundreds of stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETF) without charging commissions per operation, with plans to expand to thousands more in the coming months.
Users can now purchase fractional shares for as little as $1, using both US dollars and the USDC stablecoin, this feature is initially available only to users in the United States. The system allows you to manage portfolios of crypto assets and stocks in parallel, eliminating the need to make external transfers between different brokerage accounts.
“More than a trading platform, we are building it to power your entire financial life,” Armstrong added.
The platform has also integrated prediction markets in collaboration with the company Kalshi, feature that is already available. This allows operations based on results of real-world events, such as economic indicators, political decisions and sports competitions.
“Prediction markets allowed greater access to information and markets that historically had not existed,” said Max Branzburg, director of consumer and business products at Coinbase. Contracts are settled directly in the user’s account, taking advantage of the cryptocurrency infrastructure to guarantee agility in the processes.
Additionally, the exchange presented Coinbase Tokenize, a tool designed for real-world asset management (RWA). This institutional platform, which will arrive in the near future, will allow companies to tokenize their own shares and other financial instruments to facilitate their constant trading.
As explained by Criptopedia, the educational section of CriptoNoticias, RWA are tokens that represent tangible assets that exist outside the digital realm such as works of art, real estate, raw materials or merchandise. Through this institutional platform, companies will be able to digitize their own shares and other financial instruments.