Coinbase has achieved a significant milestone by becoming the only full-service prime brokerage in the crypto industry, offering a comprehensive suite of services including trading, custody, financing, derivatives, and cross-margining. According to John D'Agostino, head of strategy at Coinbase Institutional, the company's platform meets the traditional Wall Street criteria for a prime broker, with the added capability of staking.
In contrast to its rivals, which often piece together services from multiple providers, Coinbase provides all of these functions natively. The company's flagship platform, Coinbase Prime, has over $350 billion in assets under custody and serves as a custodian for more than 80% of U.S. bitcoin and ether ETF assets.
With the recent introduction of cross-margining, Coinbase has completed its full-service prime brokerage offering, allowing institutional clients to manage counterparty risk and access liquidity across multiple venues. The company's institutional platform processes approximately $236 billion in quarterly trading volume and supports over 470 assets across more than 20 blockchains.
Beyond trading and custody, Coinbase also operates a $1 billion lending book and has the largest listed derivatives footprint in the industry through its Deribit integration. D'Agostino believes that the company's comprehensive suite of services positions it as a leader in the crypto prime brokerage space, and that its competitors will need to either build or partner to compete.