Post Content
Coinbase wants to dominate trading.
One of the most well-known crypto trading companies in the world, the company has seen better days. The stock is down over 30% from its July 2025 highs of $445. Their crypto trading volume is also down from $1.07 billion in the first quarter of last year to a projected $922 million in Q1 2026, in a clear sign of cooling.
That may be why they launched commission-free stock and ETF trading for all U.S. users 24 hours a day, five days a week, joining the always-competitive market for retail trader cash alongside Robinhood and SoFi.
Coinbase launching 24/5 trading has been floating around the rumor mill for some time. This is a direct shot at companies like Robinhood and SoFi. In December of last year, Coinbase announced a soft launch for selected users, which finally opened the floodgates on February 24.
The full launch covers over 8,000 U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs and includes zero-commission trading, $1 fractional shares (similar to Robinhood), instant funding via dollars or USDC stablecoin, and direct integration with Yahoo Finance. It’s part of CEO Brian Armstrong’s “Everything Exchange” vision, which he laid out on New Year’s day.
Wall Street, however, doesn’t appear too interested in giving Armstrong much credit for the follow-through. COIN is up slightly on the news, but the market seems to be aware that it’s a competitive market with many companies offering products that do, well, the same thing.
So, the crux of Coinbase’s problem is — what sets them apart? And more importantly, what will entice users to switch from one trading platform to another?
Traders have been unable to escape the AI and crypto narratives over the last few years.
Until now, AI chatbots have never connected with companies like Coinbase, Robinhood, or SoFi because there wasn’t a direct or obvious use case. Maybe a more AI-attuned trader could ask ChatGPT for some advice on a given stock or perhaps a chart for a trade, or even create a passive trading bot that could make them money, though these are narrow use cases for most traders. And remember, only a few years ago, crypto traders were going wild with meme-coins on Solana and Base. As the NFT craze dried up, all that liquidity has since moved to the now-heralded prediction markets, which Coinbase also offers.
Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we’ll show you why it’s our #1 pick. Tap here.
And Coinbase, for its part, has an edge in the crypto narrative — along with general trust among its users. This, plus the trading announcement, ties nicely with the looming agentic AI or “AI agents” trend. AI Agents are essentially little worker bees that cater to any user’s every want and need. Want to ask your AI Agent to send the automated text response of “burger and fries” every time your wife or girlfriend asks what you want for dinner? Sure. You might get in trouble, but it can probably do that. Coinbase isn’t necessarily interested in that, but it wants users to create and design AI trading agents tailored to their trading style.
Late last year, Coinbase launched its “Based Agent” template, allowing users to do exactly this: deploy a customized AI trading agent in under three minutes without writing a single line of code. Coinbase’s customizable AI trading agents can autonomously execute swaps, stake assets, and manage portfolios based on simple natural-language instructions from the user, so instead of having to do any of that technical stuff yourself, a user can simply prompt their agent to do it. Coinbase also launched its Agentic Wallets on February 11, which use AI trading agents to execute all of the above without ever “seeing” the user’s private keys. All the AI trading agent does is what the user requests, based on the constraints set by Coinbase, and it has reportedly already processed over 50 million operations.
This is to Coinbase’s advantage because Robinhood and SoFi haven’t widely employed AI agents. To be fair, they leverage AI, but more in the classical sense of using agents as a supportive assistant rather than autonomously to find you the perfect trade of the day all at once. Robinhood, for its part, dropped Robinhood Cortex, which is essentially a sophisticated research assistant that creates “Digests” that summarize earnings calls, news, and technical data into personalized, conversational insights. There are reports that Robinhood allows AI agents to scan markets and trade, but it does not appear to be as advanced as Coinbase’s. SoFi is even further behind when it comes to AI trading agents, leaning on more traditional tools like “Automated Investing,” a classic robo-advisor that uses algorithms to rebalance portfolios, optimize tax-loss harvesting, and pursue more long-term indexing.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of these tools. But if you’re Coinbase, Robinhood, or SoFi competing in a fintech market as saturated as equities trading and crypto, tepid feature updates won’t defend the moat anymore.
Companies have to stay adaptable and in-sync with the narrative of the day, because that’s how you win more users, drive more volume, and stack more beats in future earnings reports — especially as financial life becomes truly 24/7.
In early November, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, an AI expert, spoke at the America Business Forum (ABF) in Miami.
He touched on this “agentic period” for businesses, arguing that the best way to make money is to start a company that builds AI agents to perform specific tasks and compete with other agents.
“If you really want to make money, it’s actually easy. Found an agentic AI company. And I don’t mean one designing agents, I mean build an agent to do something,” he said.
“This is the agentic period in AI and for the next year or two everyone’s going to build agents. The agents are all going to compete. If you build a better agent than anyone else, you could probably build one incredible company and own it yourself.”
Coinbase followed that advice. It hopes Robinhood and SoFi will be playing catch-up.
One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here.
Terms and Privacy Policy