Coinbase Stakes Out Brokerage Territory With SEC-Registered AI Advisor and Stock Options Push

Coinbase used its latest "System Update" on Tuesday to push deep into territory long held by retail brokerages, rolling out an SEC-registered AI investment advisor, stock and ETF trading on its professional platform, and options markets for both equities and crypto. The bundle moves the exchange's competitive frame from Binance and Kraken toward Robinhood, Schwab, and Interactive Brokers.

The package, outlined Tuesday in a blog post from the company, frames the strategy as building "the Everything Exchange." CEO Brian Armstrong's team itemized a wave of new and forthcoming features that include Coinbase Advisor, an AI-powered tool registered with the SEC, CFTC and NFA; pre-IPO perpetual futures via Coinbase Bermuda; real-world-asset perps tied to thematic equity baskets; and a planned unified global liquidity pool merging the company's US spot exchange, international derivatives venues, and Deribit.

Available Now

Several pieces are available now. Coinbase Advisor, the AI investing tool, is rolling out first to Coinbase One subscribers in the United States. Existing stock portfolios can be transferred in from outside brokerages, and equities trading is now exposed inside Coinbase Advanced with zero commissions, fractional shares, TradingView charting, and rewards of up to 3.5% on idle USDC balances.

Borrowing against staked Solana also went live this week through an integration with Jito and Morpho on Base, with JitoSOL loans capped at $100,000. The Coinbase One Card travel portal, paying 5% Bitcoin back on bookings, and a USDC-collateralized version of the card aimed at applicants without traditional credit histories also launched.

Pre-IPO perps debuted earlier in June. SpaceX was the launch listing, and Coinbase said contracts referencing Anthropic and OpenAI, which are anticipated to go public later this year, will follow. The product is offered by Coinbase Bermuda under a BMA license, and excludes US customers.

Not Yet Live

The headline products in the bundle still carry forward dates. Tokenized stocks backed 1:1 by underlying US shares, with on-chain dividend payouts and shareholder rights, arrive next month for non-US customers, the company said.

Options trading for crypto and stocks is "in the coming months," with no specific date attached. The unified global liquidity pool combining Coinbase's US spot venue, international derivatives platforms, and Deribit is similarly slotted for "the next few months."

Regulatory frame

Coinbase Advisor is the most novel piece. The company describes it as one of the world's first AI-powered, SEC-registered in-app investment advisors. Per Coinbase's disclosures, the product is offered by Coinbase Advisors, LLC, a Commodity Trading Advisor registered with the NFA and a Registered Investment Advisor registered with the SEC.

The advisor pulls from a user's portfolio and account history and surfaces tax-loss harvesting strategies, news-driven multi-asset trade ideas, and portfolio recommendations through a natural-language interface.

Coinbase notes in fine print that outputs may be inaccurate or incomplete and that CFTC, NFA, or SEC registration does not imply endorsement of the product.

The advisor sits alongside Coinbase for Agents, launched June 11, which lets third-party AI systems like ChatGPT or Claude execute trades within user-defined guardrails on a separate sub-account.

The derivatives stack

Beyond options, Coinbase is layering several derivatives expansions. RWA perpetual futures will offer thematic exposure to AI, Chinese equity, Defense, and Tech 100 baskets, complementing the perpetual-style equity index futures the firm rolled out on its CFTC-regulated US venue earlier in June. Crypto binaries, time-boxed up-or-down contracts on assets including BTC, ETH, and SOL across 15-minute to annual windows, and "combos" that bundle multiple predictions into a single trade, expand the prediction-markets footprint Coinbase has been building since acquiring The Clearing Company late last year.

The unified liquidity pool will matter most for sophisticated traders. Coinbase said it is the first venue approved by the CFTC to offer global regulated crypto derivatives, including options, to Americans. Routing US spot, international perps, and Deribit options inventory through one book would put the firm closer to the depth profile of Binance's combined spot and perp markets.

Diversified Revenue

Coinbase generated $1 trillion in annual stablecoin payment volume on its rails, according to disclosures Armstrong made the previous week, but the firm reported a Q1 quarterly loss of $394 million and has been working to diversify away from transaction-based revenue.

The System Update's recurring-revenue components, the credit card travel portal, USDC-secured loans, and subscription-tier access to Coinbase Advisor, are the financial reframing.

Competitive pressure has tightened as well. Kraken launched perpetual futures in the US via Bitnomial earlier in June, and brokerages such as Robinhood have steadily layered crypto onto their own equities apps. Coinbase's response is to push the convergence in the opposite direction, putting stocks, options, prediction contracts, and an AI advisor inside what was an exchange app.