The news: Coinbase launched US stock and ETF trading for all US users this week, letting customers buy and sell equities 24 hours a day, five days a week, in whole or fractional shares.

Trades can be funded with dollars or USDC stablecoins. The announcement also includes a partnership with Yahoo! Finance for research and trade execution.

Trendspotting: Coinbase is a bit behind the curve on stock trading. Crypto.com launched stock and ETF trading for US customers in January 2025, with Kraken following that April. Coinbase has, however, made some high-profile institutional partnerships in the past year, and last fall it launched a technical framework, Payments MCP, that connects its tools to LLMs.

Platforms that started with traditional assets have also long offered crypto trading. Robinhood’s original offering included commission-free stock trading, but it launched crypto trading in 2018, first with Bitcoin and Ethereum. It has since developed its own crypto wallets, bought crypto exchange Bitstamp last year, and launched stock tokens. SoFi first launched crypto trading in 2019, Webull introduced it in 2020, and Fidelity entered the ring in 2018 via its Fidelity Digital Assets subsidiary.

Implications for financial institutions: Fintechs moved faster than traditional brokerages on crypto trading and custody services, but few have built brokerage platforms with Coinbase’s level of sophistication.

Coinbase is transforming into a full-service digital brokerage and bridging traditional and decentralized finance with a more comprehensive onramp for funding trades. As those worlds converge, traditional firms’ moats are shrinking.