Coinbase Now Owns Every Layer of Its Derivatives Stack After CFTC Approval

In brief

• The CFTC has registered Coinbase Clearing LLC as a derivatives clearing organization.
• Coinbase now holds all three licenses: exchange, futures broker and clearinghouse.
• Its upcoming single stock perpetuals will still be cleared by existing partners.

Coinbase has won approval to clear its own derivatives trades, completing a set of three federal registrations that lets the crypto exchange run a futures business end to end without renting any part of it.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission registered Coinbase Clearing LLC as a derivatives clearing organization on Monday. The company already held the other two pieces: Coinbase Derivatives, LLC as a designated contract market, and Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. as a futures commission merchant.

Owning the clearinghouse changes what Coinbase can build. "For the first time, we can create and settle fully collateralized contracts directly," the company said in a statement, which it expects to mean faster product development and fewer dependencies when launching something new.

USDC as clearing collateral

Coinbase calls it the first USDC-native clearinghouse, taking the stablecoin as collateral and settling 24 hours a day, which it describes as "purpose-built for the always-on markets of the future."