Coinbase has obtained UK authorization for regulated investment services, expanding its offerings beyond cryptocurrency to include traditional financial instruments.
UK users can now trade equities on the platform for the first time, while institutional and advanced traders gain access to crypto, equity, and commodity derivatives.
The new license complements Coinbase’s existing UK e‑money and crypto registrations, reinforcing its ambition to become an “everything exchange.”
Coinbase has secured regulatory approval from the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide stocks and derivatives to both retail and institutional customers. The authorization marks the platform’s most significant product expansion in one of its key international markets and advances its vision of an “everything exchange.”
The exchange announced the approval on Tuesday, confirming it has been granted a UK investment services authorization—often referred to as a MiFID license—by the FCA. This license enables Coinbase to offer a broader suite of traditional financial instruments alongside its existing cryptocurrency services.
Today marks our biggest ever expansion of Coinbase UK’s product suite.
We’ve now secured an investment services authorisation in the UK, enabling us to soon offer both equities and derivatives.
Retail customers can now trade equities directly on Coinbase for the first time, while institutional and sophisticated traders will have access to a comprehensive range of derivatives, including crypto perpetual futures, equity futures, and commodity perpetual contracts.
This authorization reinforces Coinbase’s ambition to become an “everything exchange”—a unified platform that aims to combine crypto, stocks, derivatives, prediction markets, payments, and savings products in a single app, positioning the firm against traditional brokerages, banks, and fintech services.
In the United States, Coinbase was the first centralized exchange cleared to offer crypto perpetual futures and has been expanding its offerings to include stock trading, Kalshi‑powered prediction markets, and tokenized equity initiatives. The company recently introduced savings and borrowing products for its UK user base.
The UK’s new rules
Coinbase’s latest authorization joins its existing UK e‑money license and crypto registration, creating what the firm describes as the most comprehensively regulated crypto offering in the market. This development coincides with the UK’s broader push to finalize its crypto regulatory framework; the FCA published its rulebook in late June, with a full regime expected to take effect in October 2027. FCA research cited by Coinbase estimates that about seven million UK adults already hold crypto assets.
At present, derivative trading will be restricted to institutional and advanced retail traders. The FCA continues to prohibit the sale of crypto derivatives to retail investors, leaving equities as the primary new product accessible to everyday users.
