Coinbase reveals its trump card: How compliant derivatives and the Bitcoin American Express card will reshape the crypto landscape

Here is the English translation: Just today, as the market was still digesting the shockwaves from Israel's airstrike on Iran, global risk assets experienced a heart-stopping plunge. From Tokyo to New York, panic spread like wildfire, with gold and the US dollar becoming the only safe havens. Bitcoin, once hailed as "digital gold," was not spared, with its price plummeting. In this tense and bleak atmosphere, Coinbase, the "facade" of the American crypto world, almost simultaneously played two highly expansive cards at its annual summit, one aimed at the heart of Wall Street and the other precisely embedded in the daily life of the American middle class. These two cards were: perpetual futures trading regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and a credit card co-branded with American Express, offering up to 4% Bitcoin cashback. If these news items were viewed in isolation, people might interpret them as a routine product line expansion. However, when we zoom out and place them in the grand narrative of the post-ETF and post-FTX era, we discover that this is not a simple "new product launch," but a long-planned "Normandy landing." Coinbase is attempting to completely rewrite the crypto-financial landscape of the United States and even the global market through a carefully orchestrated "pincer movement." [The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the original tone and technical terminology.]

• Internally, it achieved a perfect user group closed loop. Perpetual contracts target "quick money" seekers who pursue high returns, high risks, and frequent trading; while the Bitcoin cashback card serves "slow money" users who want long-term holding, steady value appreciation, and low-frequency operations. From the most aggressive leveraged traders to the most conservative passive investors, Coinbase attempts to capture all crypto users across the spectrum, allowing them to find tools that meet all their needs within its platform, eliminating the need to go elsewhere.
• Externally, it built an unparalleled compliance barrier. Whether in the derivatives market or payment field, Coinbase has chosen to deeply collaborate with top-tier regulatory bodies (CFTC) and the most renowned traditional financial partners (American Express). This not only earned it an unparalleled trust endorsement but also greatly raised the entry barriers for competitors. In the foreseeable future, any platform wanting to challenge Coinbase's position in the US market must overcome these two mountains.

Looking at the near future, rumors of Coinbase being included in the S&P 500 index and its collaboration with Shopify and Stripe to promote USDC payments both point to the same endpoint: it is no longer satisfied with being a simple "cryptocurrency exchange". Its ambition is to become the "Morgan Stanley" of the digital asset era - an all-powerful financial giant integrating investment banking (derivatives trading), commercial banking (payment and savings), and asset management (Staking and wallet services).

The launch of this "double trump card" is precisely the most critical step in this grand journey. It marks that cryptocurrencies in the US are moving from the margins to the center at an unprecedented speed and depth, accelerating the integration from "alternative assets" to "mainstream allocation". The battle initiated by Coinbase may not cause significant market volatility in the short term, but it is reshaping the underlying structure and rules of the entire industry. In the future crypto world, competition will no longer focus on whose code is more decentralized, but on who can build the most solid, convenient, and irresistible bridge connecting the old and new financial continents.

And Coinbase has just laid down the two heaviest and most crucial cornerstones for this bridge with perpetual contracts and the American Express card.