Crypto meets Wall Street using perps

Everything under one login

Round-the-clock trading is one part of the plans exchanges have for traditional assets. Coinbase and Binance want customers to trade crypto, stocks and other products through one account, a model both have described as an “everything exchange” or financial super app.

Coinbase is preparing to offer U.K. customers equities and derivatives alongside crypto after securing investment-services authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority under rules based on the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID.

The authorization allows Coinbase to offer traditional shares to retail customers and crypto, equity and commodity perps to eligible institutional and advanced traders, the company said.

“Perpetual futures are a core focus of what Coinbase is trying to bring to market,” said Keith Grose, U.K. CEO at Coinbase, in an interview with CoinDesk. “We’re really focused on being the ‘everything exchange.’”

Grose said the longer-term plan is to bring spot crypto, perpetual futures, traditional equities, and eventually tokenized versions of other assets into one place. That could allow customers to use positions across different markets as collateral or borrow against their equities.

Using stocks as collateral

Binance is testing another part of the model by allowing some high-net-worth clients to use tokenized stock positions as collateral for other trades.

“We recognize you could have Nvidia or SpaceX stock, a tokenized version,” Jan said. “You could actually have a tokenized stock put on our exchange, and we’ll use that as collateral for you to trade something else. It could be a crypto derivative.”