Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big-picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, December 18th, and today we are talking about Coinbase launching stock trading. Before we get into that, however, if you're enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes or get to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, Coinbase is finishing the year off with a bang, announcing the launch of stock trading. Head of consumer and business product, Max Brandsburg, announced the new feature at Coinbase's end of your conference on Wednesday, stating, this is a major milestone in our plan to enable 24-7 trading of stocks and ETFs from anywhere in the world, powered by crypto. For the moment, the product won't use

tokenized stocks. However, select stocks will be available for extended hours trading. Tokonization is on the roadmap for next year, with an in-house platform called Coinbase tokenize. Stock trading is commissioned free, and Coinbase says they'll be adding thousands of additional stocks and ETFs to fill out the offering over the coming months. The market will be available to U.S. users and traders can fund their trades in either U.S. dollars or U.S.D.C.

all from their regular Coinbase account. TjR gave one of the prevailing takes writing, Coinbase turned into Robin Hood and Robin Hood turned into Coinbase. More accurately, both exchanges are in a competition to become an everything exchange, which is Coinbase's declared strategy moving forward.

To that end, Wednesday's announcement featured a ton of other markets coming to the platform.

Coinbase also added prediction markets powered by Kalshi. On-chain Solana trading is now also

available through a Jupiter integration in the Coinbase app. That integration means

Solana tokens are available immediately on launch going around the listing process.

In addition, Coinbase announced the launch of custom stablecoins, allowing companies to issue their own branded stable coins. Coinbase said the stable coins will be backed one-to-one

through a, quote, flexible mix of USDC and other USD stable coins. This feature is part of a broader

push to expand their payments, trading in custody, with their developer platform getting

a major upgrade to enable more white label partnerships. Another big shift is moving derivatives

trading from Coinbase advanced into the basic app with a new simplified interface.

Coinbase said the plan was to allow users to trade with less upfront capital and a more

beginner-friendly interface that, quote, makes it easier than ever to start trading futures

and perpetual futures.

Coinbase also introduced Coinbase Advisor, an AI-powered financial advisor built directly into their main app. It can help users with portfolio construction and offer personalized recommendations

based on market data. This is the biggest overhaul for Coinbase's product line in their 13-year

history, staking out their ambition to become a vertically integrated

financial services firm rather than just a crypto exchange. The company wrote,

This is a defining moment in Coinbase's journey as we double down on our mission to create

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