Coinbase Adds 24/7 Stock Perps for Non-US Traders
Coinbase added stock perpetual futures to its international product line on Friday, giving non-US traders round-the-clock, leveraged access to US equities in a contract format already familiar from crypto markets. Perpetual futures, unlike traditional futures, which expire on a fixed date, have no settlement deadline.
Positions stay open until the trader closes them or is liquidated, with a funding rate mechanism that periodically balances longs and shorts to keep the contract price near the underlying asset. Crypto traders have used this structure for Bitcoin and Ether exposure for years; Coinbase is now applying it to stocks including Apple, Nvidia, and the S&P 500.
The contracts are cash-settled, meaning no shares change hands. A trader who goes long on an Apple perpetual and closes at a profit receives the difference in cash, typically USDC, Coinbase’s preferred stablecoin, rather than actual Apple stock.
The product is available on Coinbase Advanced for retail users and on Coinbase International Exchange, the company’s Bermuda-regulated offshore venue, for institutional clients. Coinbase said it was working to expand to additional regions but gave no timeline. US persons remain excluded under existing regulatory constraints that prevent Americans from trading offshore perpetual futures products.
The Everything Exchange Strategy
CEO Brian Armstrong set the direction in January, telling investors that Coinbase’s top priority for 2026 was growing a single platform across crypto, equities, prediction markets, and commodities in spot, futures, and options formats globally. Friday’s launch is the offshore equity leg of that plan.
Earlier in March, Coinbase launched perpetual futures for retail users across 26 European countries through its MiFID, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, regulated entity. In the US, the company opened 24/5 cash equity and ETF trading to all users in January and integrated Kalshi-powered prediction markets in all 50 states in February.
The stock perpetual futures are the piece that extends the model to non-US markets on a 24/7 basis, filling the gap left by traditional stock exchanges that close on weekends and public holidays.
A Crowded Market
Coinbase is entering a competitive space. Binance already lists equity perpetual contracts. Kraken launched regulated tokenised equity perpetual futures for non-US traders earlier this year. KuCoin and a cluster of offshore platforms offer single-stock and index perps with varying degrees of regulatory oversight.
The broader backdrop is moving quickly: tokenised stocks, blockchain-based representations of real equities, surpassed $1 billion in total onchain value earlier in March, a milestone that reflects accelerating institutional appetite for equity exposure through crypto-native infrastructure.
Coinbase is betting that its regulatory credibility, the Bermuda licence, the MiFID entity, the CFTC-regulated futures business, gives it an edge over offshore competitors whose legal footing is less clear, particularly as regulators in Europe and Asia tighten scrutiny of unregulated derivatives platforms.
