Coinbase has achieved a 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 now meets the traditional Wall Street criteria for a prime broker.
This is significant because, in the crypto space, no other firm provides all these services at scale. 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 filled the last gap in its services, allowing market makers and institutional traders to reduce capital requirements.
The company's institutional platform processes around $236 billion in quarterly trading volume, supporting 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. Its staking business spans 10 to 20 tokens at an institutional scale.
According to D'Agostino, no other firm in the crypto industry provides all these services in one place, making Coinbase the sole full-service prime broker in the space.