Coinbase has achieved a milestone in the crypto industry by becoming the only full-service prime brokerage, 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 definition of a prime broker is based on a familiar checklist from Wall Street, with the added layer of staking in the crypto space.
D'Agostino noted that only a handful of firms in traditional markets, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, qualify as full-service primes, and that smaller brokers often piece together services from multiple providers. In the crypto space, Coinbase is the only company that natively offers all of these services, with its flagship platform Coinbase Prime holding over $350 billion in assets under custody. The company has become a key bridge between traditional finance and crypto markets, serving as custodian for a significant share of U.S.
bitcoin and ether ETF assets. With the rollout of cross-margining between spot and derivatives positions, Coinbase has completed its suite of services, allowing market makers and institutional traders to reduce capital requirements. The company's institutional platform processes roughly $236 billion in quarterly trading volume and supports over 470 assets across 20-plus blockchains. Beyond trading and custody, Coinbase also runs a $1 billion lending book and has the industry's largest listed derivatives footprint through its Deribit integration.
D'Agostino expects that banks and incumbents will partner with Coinbase rather than building their own crypto capabilities, and that the company's biggest threat comes from startups rather than traditional financial institutions.