Coinbase enters prediction markets in push beyond crypto

Coinbase said on Wednesday it is entering prediction markets through a partnership with Kalshi, as the U.S.-listed cryptocurrency exchange accelerates efforts to expand beyond digital assets and reposition itself as a broader trading platform.

The move, which had been widely expected, will allow Coinbase users to trade event-based contracts covering areas such as politics, economics, culture and sports, alongside cryptocurrencies and stocks. The prediction markets offering will be powered by Kalshi, a U.S.-regulated exchange that already partners with platforms including Robinhood and Webull.

“Today, we’re taking a major new step toward becoming the Everything Exchange – dramatically expanding the assets available to trade on Coinbase, including novel cryptocurrencies, stocks, perpetual futures, and prediction markets,” the company said in a statement.

Coinbase’s push into prediction markets comes as part of a wider expansion that includes adding stock trading, rolling out more advanced trading tools, and launching a tokenization roadmap aimed at eventually bringing traditional assets, including equities, on-chain. Chief Executive Brian Armstrong has said the goal is to make Coinbase the place to trade everything.

The move places Coinbase alongside rivals such as Crypto.com, Gemini and Robinhood, which have already entered the growing prediction markets space. Competition has intensified in recent weeks, with Robinhood expanding its own event contracts to include football parlays and player props.

Beyond crypto brokerages, the sector has drawn interest from a range of players. DraftKings is moving to acquire its own exchange, FanDuel has teamed up with CME-linked efforts, and Polymarket is seeking to expand its U.S. footprint. A central rivalry in the market remains Kalshi versus Polymarket, often framed as regulated platforms versus crypto-native liquidity.

Kalshi is expected to benefit from the partnership with Coinbase as it seeks deeper ties with the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Coinbase said it plans to support contracts from additional prediction market platforms in the coming months.

“A wider marketplace for predictions creates an avenue for more informed trading activity, and we plan to support contracts from additional prediction market platforms in the coming months,” Coinbase said.

Some analysts, however, expect Robinhood to see greater near-term financial benefits from prediction markets. Mizuho analysts said survey data suggests Robinhood users are more likely to commit new funds to event contracts than Coinbase customers.

“We expect a bigger percentage revenue benefit to HOOD vs. COIN given that the survey showed that users on that platform are more inclined to fund a prediction markets portfolio with fresh money,” Mizuho analysts Dan Dolev and Alexander Jenkins said in a note.

According to the survey, about 50% of Robinhood users said they were likely to invest fresh capital into prediction markets, compared with 37% of Coinbase users who said they would fund such trades by liquidating existing crypto holdings. Users showed stronger interest in economic events and politics than in sports.

Armstrong has said prediction markets are used less as a trading asset and more as a source of information about future outcomes.

“People are using prediction markets to try to figure out what is going to happen next month,” he said in a recent interview, adding that only a small fraction of users treat them primarily as a tradable asset.

Coinbase’s broader strategy includes launching “Coinbase Tokenize” for institutional real-world asset tokenization, expanding application programming interfaces across custody, payments, trading and stablecoins, and making Coinbase Business available to eligible customers in the United States and Singapore. The company is also introducing custom stablecoins and a new payments standard known as x402.

Armstrong has framed the expansion as the early stages of a longer-term transformation of the platform.

“So this is the starting point,” he said, as Coinbase seeks to retain users across market cycles by offering multiple asset classes on a single platform.