Coinbase incorporates regulated prediction markets into its “everything exchange” vision and leverages The Clearing Company to clear on-chain event contracts for cryptocurrencies and non-equities.
Speaking to crypto.news at Cannes ETHGlobal on March 31, Coinbase’s efforts to become an “everything exchange” will increasingly be carried out through regulated prediction markets, rather than just spot cryptocurrencies.
Prediction markets are nothing new to Prost Boucle. They are at the heart of Coinbase’s plan to become what he calls a “everything exchange.” “The whole strategy is very simple,” he told crypto.news.
“We want to build a do-it-all exchange with Coinbase, which means we want to bring every asset class imaginable under one regulated umbrella and offer this to both retail and institutional customers.”
Coinbase leads the way to becoming an “Everything Exchange”
That umbrella has now expanded beyond spot cryptocurrencies to include derivatives, options, tokenized stocks and shares, token sales, and importantly, event-based contracts that allow users to trade based on future outcomes. “We have a wide range of different products and we bring them together under one umbrella, which is Coinbase,” he said. “Our goal is to spread this to as many users as possible around the world. So far, we’ve had a tremendous response.”
Coinbase’s debut into prediction markets was intentionally conservative. The initial launch in the US relied on Calci, a CFTC-regulated event contract venue, giving the product an immediate regulatory backbone, but also clear constraints on geography and design.
“The first version of this product is available in the United States and some regions, but not in Europe, for example, due to unclear regulations,” Prostboucle said. This version effectively pipes the Karshi market into the Coinbase interface, allowing users to trade microcontracts around elections, sports, macrodata, and other real-world events while remaining within the framework of U.S. event contracts.
The second phase is more aggressive. In December, Coinbase agreed to acquire The Clearing Company, a startup specializing in predictive market clearing with roots in the existing event contracting ecosystem.
In an interview, Prost Boucle referred to the company as “The Clearing House,” and its strategic intentions are clear. “Our goal is to bring these capabilities in-house so that we can develop this product on-chain, and with the DNA of bringing all asset classes on-chain,” he said. In fact, Coinbase is moving from renting regulated rails to owning the payments and risk stack, pushing the on-chain lifecycle further while staying within the boundaries of event contracts. This is in contrast to crypto-native venues like Polymarket, which prioritized unconstrained on-chain liquidity first and started working on regulatory structures later.
Prediction markets dominate the conversation at ETHGlobal
When prediction markets sit alongside cryptocurrencies, derivatives, and tokenized stocks within a single app, collateral efficiency will determine whether users actually route any meaningful size through Coinbase. Prost-Boucre says here that the agency’s desk is already applying pressure. When asked about cross-margin prediction markets with Coinbase’s other products, he said, “This is also what institutional investors are asking for.” “We are currently cross-margining our perpetual futures products, which is something that our institutional investors are craving,” he added, noting the demand for “always-on exposure potential, weekend hedging, all of these things that perpetual futures have as internal features.” The logical goal is to have a single collateral pool backing a portfolio of BTC perpetual assets, tokenized stocks, geopolitical or macro event contracts, rather than locking up funds in isolated silos across venues. “Currently, we’re working on this product,” he said of cross-margining. “But long-term, I think it’s a good vision for us to have cross-margining across different asset classes.”
The main structural obstacle to that vision is Europe. “The EU prediction market is very difficult to understand because there is no unified regulatory framework,” Prost-Boucre said. “It all depends on what you have as the underlying asset,” he says, drawing a sharp line that reflects the new legal commentary. In other words, contracts about the future price of Bitcoin would be treated as financial derivatives under MiFID, while contracts about elections or soccer matches would be relegated to gambling. “If a contract is based on a financial underlying asset, it will be regulated by MiFID,” he explained. “However, other lessons, currently all about politics and sports, will be regulated by European gambling law.”
This split leaves most of today’s on-chain volume heavily skewed toward politics and sports from a regulated exchange’s perspective, leaving it in regulatory limbo. Operators wishing to offer political or sports markets across the bloc will have to navigate a patchwork of national gambling regimes, each with its own licenses, consumer rules and, in some cases, state monopolies. “This means we have to comply with all European gambling laws, as there is no uniform regulatory framework,” Prostboucle said. “These laws are quite national, quite country-specific, and very difficult to obtain.” Nevertheless, he is not ignoring the region. “I think we still hope that at some point there will be regulatory clarity around prediction markets and that there will be better structures in place to enable the proliferation of these types of contracts in Europe as well,” he said.
Beyond trading revenue, Coinbase clearly views prediction markets as an information layer that competes with polls, surveys, and even traditional media. Prost-Boucre points to examples in the US where broadcasters are already incorporating live market odds, with CNBC, CNN, Dow Jones and other media outlets recently integrating polymarket odds into their “traditional” news cycles.
It in turn focuses on questions of truth. As markets begin to price in geopolitics, conflict, and leadership changes, the debate over what actually happened could become a debate over dividends. This means that the oracles used to settle contracts may come under increasing scrutiny not only from bettors but also from regulators.
Prost-Boucre argues that most of the damage starts with poor contract design. “It’s important to find out what the event criteria are when signing a contract,” he says. “Obviously, we want to diversify the sources of truth and set some standards so that there is no ambiguity when something like this happens,” he added. Asked whether an AI agent could help by aggregating different mediums and making a comprehensive verdict, he said he was open but cautious. “Potentially, AI could help sort out different sources of truth and ensure that we get a unified view and a fixed view, unbiased by any particular media or even by any particular group of people,” he said.
For now, Coinbase’s approach is less about chasing the wildest versions of prediction markets and more about proving it can live within the same ruleset as everything else on its platform. That means keeping the market within regulated boundaries, pulling clearing and risk in-house through clearing companies, and tying the whole thing into a broader multi-asset venue where collateral is actually maintained across products. As Brian Armstrong put it in another context, Coinbase wants to be the “most trusted bridge” to the crypto economy, and within that framework, everything else, from MiFID shearing in Brussels to the next generation of AI-driven oracles, is just a set of design constraints to avoid, not a reason not to participate in the market.
