Lines Between Crypto and TradFi Will Vanish, Bitwise Says

According to Bitwise, the boundary separating traditional finance (TradFi) and the cryptocurrency sector has started to disappear.

Such a statement has come after Coinbase's sweeping "System Update" announcement, which unveiled a massive push to become an "Everything Exchange".

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan has noted that Coinbase might eventually cease being a crypto company per se if its revenue eventually stems from non-spot trading activities (trading stocks, offering perpetual futures and options, and so on). "The lines between crypto and TradFi are going to vanish," Hougan stated.

The cryptocurrency-native firm, which competes with the likes of Binance and Kraken, will now face off against the likes of Robinhood, Charles Schwab, and Interactive Brokers.

The "everything exchange"

Coinbase aspires to become the main financial account for its users, making sure that they use a single login for all types of investment activities (including those that do not involve crypto). The platform will no longer be confined to the on-chain world.

Next month, non-U.S. customers will be able to trade tokenized stocks on the exchange. Holders will receive dividend payouts and shareholder rights on top of such perks as 24/7 trading and peer-to-peer transfers. Traders can now transfer existing stock portfolios from other platforms directly to Coinbase.

The exchange will also introduce options trading for both traditional equities and make it possible for its users to gain exposure to pre-public companies like Anthropic, and OpenAI.

Finally, Coinbase is introducing time-boxed up-or-down bets in response to the success of prediction markets.

AI integration

Coinbase is also focused on the integration of artificial intelligence into its infrastructure. Users can now deploy AI agents to execute complicated portfolio strategies around the clock. The parameters of a specific agent can be defined with human language.