From options derivatives to prediction markets, a quick overview of Coinbase's new crypto acquisition landscape in 2025.

Original article by Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author/ Wenser ( @wenser2010 )

As 2025 draws to a close, Coinbase is making another move, this time targeting the hot prediction market sector.

Last night, Coinbase announced its acquisition of prediction market startup The Clearing Company. Founded by Kalshi and former Polymarket employees, the company had previously secured $15 million in seed funding with Coinbase's participation. This acquisition is seen as a key step in Coinbase's vision of building an "Everything Exchange."

As a significant cryptocurrency stock in the US stock market, Coinbase's series of acquisitions in 2025 are gradually revealing its deep-seated on-chain strategy. Odaily will analyze its acquisitions of the year in this article, attempting to provide insight into Coinbase's future strategic direction.

Coinbase's Top 10 Acquisitions of 2025: From On-Chain Products to Financial Platforms

Roam: On-Chain Explorer and Search Engine

In January of this year, Roam, an on-chain explorer and search engine, officially announced its acquisition by Coinbase. The project's co-founders , Xen Baynham-Herd (CEO), Ali Fathalian (CTO), and John Granata (CFO), have all joined Coinbase to help accelerate the company's on-chain consumer development.

Subsequently, the project's CEO, @XenBH, became Base's current Global Head of Growth, while the project itself faded into obscurity.

Official project account: https://x.com/roam_xyz

Spindl: On-Chain Advertising Platform

In late January of this year, according to official news , Coinbase announced the acquisition of on-chain advertising platform Spindl, aiming to rebuild the on-chain advertising technology stack. The specific acquisition amount was not disclosed. Founded by Antonio Garcia-Martinez, a former member of the Facebook advertising team, the platform focuses on solving on-chain distribution problems faced by builders. Its technology allows Coinbase to help developers spread their content on-chain and find distribution channels within Coinbase and the entire on-chain economy.

The platform previously raised $7 million in funding in 2022, led by DragonFly Capital and Chapter 1, with participation from Polygon Ventures, Tribe Capital, Multicoin, and Solana Ventures. At that time, founder García Martínez stated that the company was attempting to rebuild the backend infrastructure of Web2 e-commerce for Web3—that is, how internet companies track where their customers come from and develop customer acquisition strategies to attract more users. For example, Spindl can analyze Discord posts, Reddit forums, advertisements, and other internet links, matching this data with on-chain behaviors such as purchases, sales, and transactions to create profiles that help the protocol understand the source of traffic.

And it is clear that, similar to the acquisition of internet platforms by Web2 internet giant Alibaba, the ultimate fate of these projects is still similar: the team is absorbed into the Coinbase or Base organizational structure, and the project gradually disappears until it quietly ceases operation.

Official project account: https://x.com/spindl_xyz

Iron Fish: A Universal Privacy Layer for Crypto Assets

In March of this year, Coinbase's L2 network Base acquired the development team of the privacy blockchain Iron Fish through a team acquisition , and specifically emphasized that "this acquisition is limited to the team, and Base will not acquire the Iron Fish blockchain or its native token."

This move mirrors Circle's previous acquisition of Interop Labs, the development team behind Axelar, without any intention of acquiring Axelar Network, Axelar Foundation, and the AXL token. In the eyes of tech giants, crypto project developers are intangible organizational assets, while tokens and the crypto projects themselves are more like "debt." Recommended reading: "Circle's Acquisition of Axelar Sparks Controversy: Giants Only Want People, Not Coins."

Official project account: https://x.com/ironfishcrypto

Deribit: The world's largest cryptocurrency derivatives platform

In May of this year, Coinbase spent a whopping $2.9 billion (including $700 million in cash and 11 million shares of Coinbase Class A common stock) to acquire crypto options platform Deribit, aiming to integrate spot, futures, and options trading and deeply coordinate the trading capabilities of its platform. At the time, Coinbase was primarily attracted by Deribit's platform's $30 billion in open interest and $1 trillion in trading volume.

Subsequently, Coinbase's Q1 2025 financial report showed that its revenue decreased by 12% quarter-over-quarter to $2.03 billion, falling short of market expectations, while trading revenue decreased by nearly 19% year-over-year to $1.3 billion. However, analysts from institutions such as Bernstein and Canaccord gave positive reviews to the "Coinbase acquisition of Deribit," believing that this move would enhance Coinbase's strategic position in the derivatives field and facilitate its global expansion.

Official project account: https://x.com/DeribitOfficial

Liquifi: Token Management Company

In July of this year, Coinbase officially acquired token management company Liquifi, marking Coinbase's fifth acquisition this year. Furthermore, Coinbase's Head of Corporate Development, Aklil Ibssa, declined to disclose the specific terms and amount of the transaction.

Liquifi's last funding round was reportedly a $5 million seed round in 2022, led by venture capital firm Dragonfly, with participation from cryptocurrency heavyweights such as Katie Haun and Balaji Srinivasan. Prominent cryptocurrency companies like the Uniswap Foundation, OP Labs, Ethena, and Zora use the platform to track cryptocurrency holdings, distribute tokens after vesting periods, and manage complex tax withholding processes.

Since then, the project's last update has been the tweet announcing its acquisition.

Official project account: https://x.com/liquifi_finance

Opyn: DeFi Options Protocol

Also in July, Coinbase completed its sixth acquisition this year , in the form of a talent acquisition, bringing in two core members of the DeFi options protocol Opyn: CEO Andrew Leone and Head of Research Joe Clark. The two subsequently joined Coinbase's on-chain marketplace team to participate in the development of the Verified pool and other on-chain products.

Coinbase has stated that the Opyn team launched the first DeFi options protocol and developed Power Perpetuals and Squeeth products. It's worth noting that Opyn was sued by the CFTC in 2023 for allegedly operating an unregistered trading platform and ultimately settled with a $250,000 fine; co-founders Zubin Koticha and Alexis Gauba resigned at the time.

It is reported that Opyn has raised at least $10.9 million in funding in the two rounds of financing, including a $2.16 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital and a $6.7 million Series A round in 2021 led by Paradigm, with participation from Dragonfly Capital, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, and others.

Official project account: https://x.com/opyn_

Sensible: Crypto Yield Platform

In September of this year, Coinbase officially acquired Jacob Frantz and Zachary Salmon, founders of the crypto yield platform Sensible. The two naturally joined Coinbase, while the whereabouts of a small number of other employees are unknown.

Ultimately, the project ceased operations in October , with the last tweet from the project's official account being a "welcome message" from Aklil Ibssa, Head of Corporate Development at Coinbase.

Official project account: https://x.com/holdsensible

Echo: Launchpad platform

In October of this year, Coinbase acquired Echo, the Launchpad platform owned by crypto KOL Cobie (renowned cryptocurrency trader Jordan Fish), for $375 million . This is Cobie's second income from Coinbase—the first being $25 million for his podcast program UpOnly NFT . This means that although this ticket does not grant any sponsorship rights, we, as onlookers, can still look forward to the official release of the program in the future.

In addition, Cobie also stated that ECHO will continue to operate as an independent platform for the time being, but its public offering product sonar will be integrated into Coinbase.

Official project account: https://x.com/echodotxyz

Vector.fun: Solana Ecosystem Trading Platform

In November of this year, Max Branzburg, Coinbase's Vice President of Product Management , revealed that the company would acquire the Solana trading platform Vector.fun. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year, but the terms and specific amount of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

Following the acquisition, Vector.fun's existing application will be shut down, and its technology will be used to enhance the decentralized trading capabilities of the Coinbase application, enabling users to trade Solana ecosystem assets directly through Coinbase, breaking through the current limitation of only supporting on-chain transactions on the Base chain.

In response to the acquisition, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated , "Earlier this year I said we would be enhancing our Solana gaming capabilities. Since then, we've brought AgentKit and x402 to Solana and upgraded our infrastructure to scale the service (5x increase in block throughput and 4x increase in RPC performance). Now, we're bringing Solana's native technology and talent to our platform to enhance Coinbase's support for Solana transactions. This is how we build the exchange for everything."

It's also worth mentioning that this acquisition has been criticized by market participants for insider trading. Vector.fun's token TNSR surged eightfold in two days before plummeting 40%, with Moonrock Capital founder Simon Dedic criticizing Coinbase for alleged insider trading . Furthermore, Vector.fun's developer, Tensor, and its token remain independent of this acquisition, leading to the inference that Tensor will cash out a large undisclosed sum while TNSR holders will "get nothing," further highlighting the misalignment between equity and tokens.

Official project account: https://x.com/VECTORDOTFUN

The Clearing Company: Prediction Market Startup Platform

The most recent acquisition took place yesterday.

Coinbase has released a detailed announcement regarding its acquisition of the prediction market platform The Clearing Company, which states:

• The Clearing Company team, led by founder and CEO Toni Gemayel (Odaily note: he previously served as Head of Growth at Polymarket and Kalshi, and some of the staff came from Polymarket), will help expand the trading volume of the world-class prediction market on Coinbase, accelerating our exciting goal of being part of Everything Exchange;
• The transaction is subject to customary transfer conditions and is expected to be completed in January.

It's worth noting that Coinbase previously launched a prediction market service powered by Kalshi and claimed it would introduce more prediction market platform contracts, and now it seems that it has indeed done so. Furthermore, The Clearing Company completed a $15 million seed funding round in August of this year , led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Haun Ventures, Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Compound, and others.

With this, Coinbase completed the final piece of the puzzle in the cryptocurrency industry – the prediction market.

Official project account: https://x.com/theclearingco

Conclusion: Coinbase's ambition: To exchange everything.

Looking at Coinbase's top 10 acquisitions this year, most did not disclose specific amounts, and most were talent acquisitions—except for Deribit, Vector.fun, and The Clearing Company, which either already have a very high industry standing and abundant liquidity and trading volume; serve as bridging components for expanding the ecosystem network; or are riding the wave of hot trends with promising futures.

Coinbase's ultimate goal, in fact, has long been the "Everything Exchange" that CEO Amstrong Brian and Base head Jesse Pollak often mentioned. Its ultimate purpose is to reverse this—Exchange Everything, creating a "one-stop trading platform" to meet users' diverse trading needs regarding on-chain tokens, on-chain consumption, on-chain finance, spot trading, options, futures, and even prediction market betting events. This will truly transform "Coinbase as a Service" (CAAS) into a solid moat for business models such as stablecoin custody.

In competition with leading CEXs such as Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Upbit, while most exchanges have chosen a "single-point breakthrough" route, Coinbase has chosen a development path with a higher ceiling but also greater difficulty—"system integration".

However, its unparalleled status as the "first cryptocurrency stock" and its continued strong growth momentum may help it become a representative investment target in the crypto industry. It's no wonder that Ark Invest, under the management of Sister Wood, lists it as having the "largest crypto holdings".