Coinbase released several major updates on June 13th. First, Shopify will enable USDC on Base through Shopify Payments and Shop Pay at checkout, and Coinbase also decided to integrate DEX on the Base chain into its main application. More surprisingly, the CFTC-regulated Coinbase announced the launch of 24/7 perpetual contracts in the US market.
As the saying goes, "Slowly, then all at once," Coinbase has quickly thrown a lot of positive news to the market. Whether this series of operations can help Coinbase surpass other exchanges and become the largest compliant Crypto ecosystem remains to be seen.
When S&P 500 Listed Exchanges Connect Their Own Public Chains
It must be mentioned that as a Layer2, Base has achieved good results within two years of its launch, with 535 protocols, 1.23 million active addresses, $5.1 billion in DeFi TVL, and $4.1 billion in stablecoin total volume. Apart from its UOPS (user operations per second) leading all Layer2s, it ranks in the top five among all public chains in protocol numbers, protocol revenue, active addresses, DeFi TVL, and stablecoin total volume.
Base is also trying various on-chain business models, from DID to creator economy, from financial social to AI. For on-chain players, the frequency of high-market-value "explosive tokens" is relatively low compared to other DEGEN chains, but for developers and product projects, Base is a paradise of continuous "positive feedback", making it one of the most beloved public chains among developers.
Following Binance and OKX's footsteps, at yesterday's 2025 Cryptocurrency Summit, Coinbase's Product Management Vice President Max Branzburg announced that Coinbase will integrate DEX on the Base chain into its main application, with future applications embedding DEX trading. Coinbase now has over 100 million registered users, with 8 million monthly active trading users, and according to Coinbase's investor report, the platform's customer asset value is $328 billion.
Retail trading only accounts for about 18% of Coinbase, and since 2024, the proportion of institutional client trading has been continuously increasing (Q1 2024 trading volume was $256 billion, accounting for 82.05% of total trading volume). With Coinbase integrating DEX on Base, it should be able to introduce massive liquidity for thousands of Base chain tokens, and more importantly, many Base ecosystem products will have the possibility of a compliant pathway to the real world through Coinbase.
Coinbase Institutional Client Trading Volume, Source: Backlinko
The first to respond to this news was Base's top DEX Aerodrome, which announced that its DEX functionality on the Base network will be integrated into the Coinbase main app. As the news spread, its token $AERO price rose nearly 30% within 24 hours, then slightly adjusted to a current price of $0.62.
How Does Coinbase Open the Large-Scale Stablecoin Application Market?
Collaboration with Shopify
On June 13th, e-commerce platform Shopify announced a partnership with Coinbase and Stripe to support merchants accepting USDC stablecoin issued by Circle. Through this service, consumers can pay using USDC on the Base chain in 34 countries. This collaboration will open payment channels for millions of merchants, who can choose to receive USDC or receive payment in local currency directly into their bank account.
Simultaneously, Coinbase and Shopify launched a "Business Payment Protocol" aimed at solving the application bottleneck of cryptocurrencies in commercial payment scenarios. The two parties will build new custody smart contracts on Base, enabling seamless crypto payment integration in e-commerce. Authorization, capture, and refunds will be handled in collaboration with Stripe, providing a completely seamless settlement experience for merchants using local currency or USDC. In the future, the protocol will open APIs requiring no crypto knowledge, and integrated wallets will allow users to pay directly through signatures.
As one of the world's most famous "independent site" e-commerce platforms, Shopify's growth trend in recent years is visibly significant. Shopify's GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) was $235.91 billion in 2023, reaching $292.28 billion in 2024, and $74.75 billion in the first quarter of 2025, a 23% increase compared to the same period last year.
Shopify's main customers are in Europe and North America, where cryptocurrency compliance and popularization are higher. Based on USDC's advantages in cross-border payment transfers, this collaboration may drive a certain proportion of merchants to join this payment system.
Collaboration with American Express
On June 13th, Coinbase announced a partnership with American Express to issue a cryptocurrency credit card, Coinbase One Card, specifically for Coinbase One annual subscribers, marking American Express's first cryptocurrency credit card.
The card offers various benefits, including a $500 monthly zero-fee quota and up to 4% Bitcoin cashback when purchasing, with reward rates increasing based on assets held on Coinbase.
Real estate investor Graham Stephan, who has 5 million YouTube subscribers, stated he would not choose the Coinbase One credit card but would use the Robinhood Gold card. He explained, "You must hold a certain amount of assets on Coinbase, which requires at least $10,250 to break even," while "Robinhood Gold card costs $50 annual subscription and offers 3% unlimited cashback that can be invested in BTC. Compared to standard 2% cashback cards, Robinhood Gold card's break-even point is $5,000."
With the excellent performance of Circle, the issuing company of USDC, in the US stock market a few days ago, the trading volume of USDC reached $76 billion this month, surpassing USDT to become the top stablecoin.
However, we can see that in terms of supply, active addresses, and market share, USDC is only one-third the size of USDT. With Coinbase opening up channels for CeFi and DeFi, online shopping routes, and physical consumption routes, USDC's growth should continue to increase.
Reopening the Contract Button for Americans
Besides the stablecoin track's efforts, Coinbase has also thrown out a "killer move" in trading, which is a series of operations in response to its previous quarter's financial report. In the last quarter, its earnings per share (EPS), revenue, and platform revenue all collectively declined. Compared to spot trading, which is more affected by the market, contract trading is a more "stable" source of income.
Therefore, Coinbase took a series of measures, the most important of which is its recent announcement to launch 24/7 perpetual futures contract functionality in the US that meets the requirements of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). On May 9th, Coinbase had already launched 24/7 Bitcoin and Ethereum futures trading through its CFTC-regulated exchange Coinbase Derivatives (formerly the derivatives trading platform FairX), LLC. In May, Coinbase also completed the acquisition of Deribit, one of the world's largest crypto options exchanges, thus beginning to join the competition in the top derivatives market.
Deribit has a strong influence in non-US markets (especially in Asia and Europe), and the acquisition gives Coinbase its dominant position in Bitcoin and Ethereum options trading, "accounting for about 80% of global options trading volume, with daily trading volume maintained above $2 billion". At the same time, 80-90% of Deribit's customer base are institutional investors, and its professionalism and liquidity in the Bitcoin and Ethereum options market are highly favored by institutions. Coinbase's compliance advantages and originally complete institutional ecosystem make it more suitable, and by using institutions as an entry point, it can face the squeeze from giants like Binance and OKX in the derivatives market.
After the compliance cleanup a few years ago, the US market had not had an exchange launch compliant derivatives for a long time. The US market has always been a "sweet spot" in the eyes of exchanges, but for "US players", apart from CME Group providing ETH and BTC options for institutions, there are only on-chain exchanges that bypass regulations, such as the recently emerging Hyperliquid. Coinbase's "monopolistic" market provides a shortcut for it in the derivatives field.
As various CEXs face a slowdown in market user growth at this stage and continue to seek new revenue tracks, will Coinbase's simultaneous launch of multiple measures be able to reshuffle the existing CEX landscape?
