I can shake it, shake it, like I’m supposed to do: Coinbase has launched pre-IPO perpetual futures, letting retail customers take long or short positions on private companies before they list, while at the same time talking up its new sports-centric prediction market combos.

• Speaking during the company’s system update event this week, Max Branzburg, head of consumer, said perps offer exposure to companies before they go public, naming SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI as available or imminent.
• “You can trade instantly without waiting for an allocation, go long or short 24/7 like any other perpetual future,” he said.

I got that boom boom that all the boys chase: Liz Martin, VP of product and head of derivatives and markets, set the launch against the backdrop of a wider derivatives push. She said crypto derivatives “drive 80% of global crypto volume” and positioned Coinbase as the venue to repatriate that activity.

• “It started with us being the first to launch perpetual futures in the US last year,” Martin said.
• “The majority of volume remains offshore,” she added, saying that customers should not need a VPN to reach it.
• Two weeks ago, she said, Coinbase became the first US company to “connect American customers to our global crypto derivatives markets.”

And all the right junk in all the right places: On prediction markets, the news was Coinbase’s push into combos. “We’re launching Combos, the ability to roll up multiple predictions into a single, much more powerful position,” Branzburg said.

• The sports orientation of the product was explicit. Branzburg referenced “picking Scottie Scheffler this week in the US Open” and listed live “in-game scores and plays” among the data the redesigned product surfaces.

One way or another: Alongside Combos, Coinbase announced “hundreds of new crypto binary markets,” including 15-minute contracts or short-duration, high-frequency products that echo in-play betting more than investing.

• Branzburg attached no volume, handle or user figure to the prediction markets business, calling it only a source of “explosive growth.”

Kalshi ♥️ Coinbase: Recent data captures Coinbase’s footprint, and suggests it is substantial. EKG’s Prediction Markets Monitor this week found that Coinbase’s January 2026 integration with Kalshi – through which Coinbase distributes Kalshi’s event contracts – strengthened Kalshi’s position as a “hybrid sports-and-financial-event platform.”

• Following that integration, EKG reported, crypto’s share of Kalshi’s execution volume expanded materially, with the growth led by short-duration Bitcoin contracts.
• The analysts read the demand for those high-frequency, rapidly resolving markets as evidence of an appetite for gamified event trading.
• “While sports remains the dominant driver of activity, crypto has emerged as the clearest source of incremental diversification, led by rapid growth in short-duration Bitcoin contracts,” EKG wrote.
• In an inaugural prediction market report this week, Stifel’s analysts said prediction markets were “starting to expand into crypto, accelerating diversification away from sports and deepening integration into the financial ecosystem.”

15 minutes of fame: Given Coinbase has been a core driver of Kalshi’s crypto volume, the 15-minute crypto binaries it announced last week look like the in-house version of the very product format its Kalshi partnership helped scale.

• Hence, combos and crypto binaries are less a new departure than a move to internalize volume Coinbase has been routing to a partner.
• EKG’s separate observation that short-resolution crypto markets may become to financial event trading what parlays became to sportsbooks fits the same pattern.

Armstrong’s stretch: Between pre-IPO perps, crypto binaries and combos, Coinbase is assembling a suite that borrows heavily from the leverage and parlay mechanics of regulated betting, routed through a securities-to-derivatives wrapper.

• Whether that wrapper holds, and how the CFTC and SEC view 15-minute binaries and correlated parlays on sporting outcomes, is not a question the update addressed.
• But there can be no doubting the scale of Coinbase’s ambitions. Opening up the event, CEO Brian Armstrong said Coinbase was “here to help.”
• “We’re here to help you take control of this dynamic world and own a piece of the upside.”
• Buzzword bingo: This was at least less controversial than Armstrong’s performance during the company’s Q3 earnings call last November where he landed in hot water over a sorry/not sorry incident related to mention markets.

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