Coinbase announced Monday it has agreed to buy The Clearing Company, a prediction‑market start‑up — its tenth acquisition of 2025 — as part of a broader push to transform the exchange into an all‑in‑one financial app. The move dovetails with CEO Brian Armstrong’s vision to make Coinbase a one‑stop destination for a wide range of trades: stocks, streamlined futures and perpetual contracts, and now prediction markets. Coinbase has already signaled partnerships in the space (notably with Kalshi), and the acquisition is intended to accelerate the rollout of outcome‑style trading on its platform. Prediction markets saw a surge of mainstream interest during the 2024 U.S. presidential race — platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket drew heavy attention — and exchanges are racing to add such high‑frequency, engagement‑driving products as competition intensifies. Analysts say broadening product suites across asset classes can help Coinbase reduce its historical reliance on spot crypto trading and deepen user engagement. Benchmark analysts specifically flagged prediction markets as a tool that could boost in‑app activity, while JPMorgan noted many of Coinbase’s recent initiatives are squarely aimed at improving customer engagement, an area where the company has faced limits. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Coinbase expects the acquisition of The Clearing Company — part of its “Everything Exchange” strategy — to close in January 2026. This acquisition joins a busy M&A year for Coinbase: in May it agreed to buy derivatives exchange Deribit for $2.9 billion, and in October it struck a deal to acquire investment platform Echo for roughly $375 million. Coinbase’s ambitions extend beyond M&A. The firm is building a unified brokerage experience that blends traditional assets, derivatives and blockchain capabilities, including outcome trading. It’s also launching Coinbase Tokenize, an institutional‑grade infrastructure to support tokenization of real‑world assets (RWAs). On the institutional and developer side, Coinbase is expanding Coinbase Business to qualifying customers in the U.S. and Singapore and rolling out an expanded API suite covering custody, payments, trading and stablecoins. The company plans to offer “custom stablecoins” for firms that want branded payment rails and is promoting an x402 payments standard designed to streamline stablecoin transactions tied to web requests. Shares of Coinbase (COIN) closed Monday at $247.90. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news