Coinbase Launches Stock Trading as Crypto Exchange Chases Traditional Finance Revenue

Coinbase Launches Stock Trading as Crypto Exchange Chases Traditional Finance Revenue

Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange that went public in 2021, has rolled out stock trading to all U.S. customers this week, marking its most aggressive push yet into traditional financial services as the crypto industry faces persistent regulatory headwinds.

The move transforms Coinbase's app into a unified trading platform where customers can buy and sell both equities and digital assets—a bet that the future of finance looks less like separate silos and more like one account that holds everything. For CFOs watching the blurring lines between crypto and traditional finance infrastructure, it's a signal that the "everything app" model is migrating from Asia to American finance.

Customers can now trade stocks and exchange-traded funds alongside their crypto holdings 24 hours a day, five days a week, with zero commission fees. The platform initially supports leading equities, with Coinbase promising to expand to "thousands more stocks" in coming months. Fractional share trading is available from the start, lowering the barrier for retail investors who've grown accustomed to buying $10 worth of Bitcoin to do the same with Amazon or Tesla shares.

The stock trading capability runs on infrastructure from Apex Fintech Solutions, which handles clearing, custody, and execution services—essentially the plumbing that connects Coinbase's interface to actual equity markets. Users can fund trades instantly using either U.S. dollars or USDC, Coinbase's preferred stablecoin, with Coinbase One subscribers earning rewards on their USDC trading balances.

The company is already planning its next move. This spring, Coinbase intends to launch stock perpetuals—derivative contracts that track equity prices—for international users, offering 24/7 exposure to U.S. stocks with capital efficiency that traditional brokerages can't match. The company also teased plans for "tokenised stocks," which would allow users to trade equities "anywhere in the world, leverage your equity holdings as onchain collateral, and make instant payments backed by your stock value."

That last bit is where this gets interesting for finance executives. If Coinbase succeeds in tokenizing stocks—representing shares as blockchain-based tokens—it could enable the kind of instant settlement and collateral flexibility that traditional securities infrastructure simply can't deliver. Whether regulators will allow that vision to materialize is another question entirely.

A partnership with Yahoo Finance will let users jump directly from researching a stock to executing a trade on Coinbase with one click, while Yahoo Finance will offer asset tracking within its interface. It's the kind of distribution deal that could give Coinbase access to millions of retail investors who've never touched cryptocurrency.

Coinbase framed the launch as "bridging the divide between traditional investments and the digital asset economy," allowing users to manage unified portfolios within a single app. The subtext: as crypto trading volumes remain volatile and regulatory clarity elusive, diversifying into stock trading provides a more stable revenue stream and keeps users engaged even when Bitcoin isn't making headlines.

For traditional brokerages like Charles Schwab and Fidelity—which have spent years building their own crypto capabilities—the competitive threat is now bidirectional. The question is whether Coinbase's crypto-native user base will embrace stock trading, or whether this is a solution in search of a problem that Robinhood already solved.