Coinbase Wins FCA License for UK Derivatives and Equities Trading

Coinbase has secured an investment services license in the United Kingdom. The FCA authorized the exchange to add derivatives and equities to a platform where UK users could previously trade only crypto.

FCA research shows that roughly 7 million UK adults already hold crypto. The approval gives Coinbase a route into traditional finance before the country's full crypto regime takes effect in October 2027. The company's shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker COIN, and the new authorization applies specifically to its UK arm.

What the Regulator Actually Approved

The new license lets institutional and advanced traders access perpetual futures, derivative contracts with no expiry date that track the price of an underlying asset. Those can be tied to crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, plus equities and commodities. Retail users in the UK will be able to trade equities directly on Coinbase for the first time, without opening a separate brokerage account elsewhere.

The authorization sits alongside the company's existing UK e-money license and its FCA cryptoasset registration, granted in February 2025. Coinbase called it its largest UK product expansion since entering the market. Future rollouts still depend on separate FCA permissions and local market rules, so the full product lineup will arrive gradually rather than all at once.

The company has been building up its UK licensing base step by step since it first entered the market. That approach reflects a broader trend among large crypto exchanges: spot trading fees keep compressing under competitive pressure, pushing platforms toward new revenue streams in adjacent financial products.

Why Retail Derivatives Remain Off the Table

In 2021, the FCA banned the sale, marketing and distribution of crypto derivatives and exchange-traded notes to retail investors. Regulators at the time viewed these products as too risky for non-professional clients, citing the volatility of the underlying assets and limited experience among some buyers. That derivatives ban still stands, even though the crypto market itself has changed considerably since then.

Only ETN access was partially restored, starting October 8, 2025, and only through FCA-approved Recognised Investment Exchanges, a category of venues cleared to list complex financial instruments. Financial promotion and consumer protection rules apply immediately to those trades. That's why Coinbase's new license works asymmetrically. Institutional clients get perpetual futures, while retail gets equities without leverage. For an average UK user, crypto derivatives remain outside the platform.

The gap between the two product categories explains the regulator's logic. ETNs trade on regulated exchanges with transparent pricing and no leverage, which makes them easier to oversee. Direct crypto derivatives, by contrast, often involve leverage and can wipe out a novice trader's deposit within minutes during a sharp price swing, which is why the FCA isn't ready to open them up to the mass market yet.

Why Coinbase Is Moving Beyond Crypto

The UK approval fits into the company's broader Everything Exchange strategy. The idea is simple: combine crypto derivatives, tokenized assets, prediction markets and consumer finance products on one platform, instead of keeping users confined to crypto trading alone. That approach puts Coinbase closer to traditional brokers like Robinhood or eToro, which have long blended stocks and crypto in a single app.

Within this strategy, prediction markets mean contracts on the outcome of specific events outside classic exchange trading, while consumer finance products cover cards, payments and everyday tools for managing capital on the platform.

In the US, Coinbase customers already trade stocks and ETFs directly on the exchange. For eligible non-US users, the company opened trading in perpetual futures on large-cap stocks like Apple, Microsoft and Tesla, settled in USDC. Coinbase also plans to launch tokenized stocks backed one-for-one by real US equities, including dividend rights. Those products are already being tested outside the UK and US. The London approval gives the company a regulated path to expand now, rather than waiting until 2027.

What the Market Faces Before October 2027

The UK's new crypto regime will touch a far wider group of firms than Coinbase alone. Trading platforms, custodians, stablecoin issuers and staking providers will all need separate FCA authorization before the regime takes full effect. A similar licensing principle already applies across the EU under the MiCA framework, so the UK version builds on that broader European logic rather than inventing a new one. The FCA's list of regulated participants also extends to other intermediaries, such as wallet operators and payment services, so the new regime's scope is broader than exchanges alone.

The regulator will start accepting applications in September 2026, with requirements becoming mandatory for the whole UK market a year later. The picture isn't final yet, and a few questions remain open.

• The full regime's timeline could slip, as has happened with crypto rules in other jurisdictions.
• The FCA's stance on retail derivatives: the regulator did not comment before publication and gave no date for a possible review of the ban.
• Rivals like Kraken and OKX have already adjusted products for MiCA rules in the EU and could make a similar move in the UK.
• Coinbase's tokenized stocks are currently available only to customers outside the UK and US, and the company hasn't said when that might change locally.

A Cautious Merger of Crypto and Traditional Finance

Coinbase secured regulated access to the UK equities and derivatives market ahead of most rivals. The FCA's figures, 7 million crypto owners and a quarter of interested newcomers, suggest real demand for these products in the country. But retail derivatives remain banned, and the regulator hasn't given a date for lifting that restriction. The next two years, leading up to the full regime in October 2027, will show whether other exchanges can catch up and whether the FCA reconsiders its stance on retail traders.

For the industry as a whole, Coinbase's move is another signal that large exchanges are gradually turning into multi-product financial platforms rather than staying niche crypto trading venues.