Emerging Opportunities in Digital Asset Markets
Coinbase Ventures released its 2026 investment priorities on Tuesday, focusing on perpetual futures for real-world assets, specialized trading platforms, DeFi innovations, and the intersection of crypto with AI and robotics. The venture capital arm identified several emerging opportunities across digital asset markets.
Expanding Real-World Asset (RWA) Perpetual Futures
Among top priorities is expanding RWA perpetuals beyond traditional crypto assets. Perpetual futures can create synthetic exposure to off-chain assets, from private companies to macroeconomic data prints, without requiring the underlying asset to be secured.
Kinji Steimetz, associate of Coinbase Ventures, wrote that as crypto becomes increasingly intertwined with macro markets, a more sophisticated trader base seeks to express a wider range of views. This creates demand for macro asset exposure on-chain, allowing traders to hedge or position through instruments tied to oil, inflation breakevens, credit spreads, and volatility.
Specialized Trading Platforms
The team highlighted specialized exchanges as a key opportunity in the trading realm. Prop-AMMs on Solana are designed to protect liquidity providers from toxic flow, according to the blog post.
Coinbase Ventures is also watching trading terminals for prediction markets closely. Jonathan King, senior manager of investments, noted that fragmentation currently plaguing the prediction market sector is fueling demand for unified trading terminals.
DeFi Innovations
In DeFi, Coinbase identified composable perpetual markets as a major growth area. These markets integrate features allowing traders to earn yield on collateral while maintaining leveraged positions.
The team pointed to unsecured on-chain credit as another significant opportunity. Reputation-based lending could capture a portion of the $1.3 trillion unsecured credit market in the United States, the post stated.
Privacy technology represents another key opportunity in DeFi, with demand rising for private order flow, borrowing, lending, and payments that preserve user confidentiality.
Intersection of Crypto, AI, and Robotics
Beyond financial infrastructure, Coinbase Ventures highlighted fast-emerging intersections between crypto, AI, and robotics.
The team suggested that 2026 might be the defining moment for smart contract development. AI agents could enable non-technical founders to launch on-chain businesses rapidly through automated code generation and security monitoring.
Recent Capital Deployment
Coinbase's 2026 strategic priorities align with recent capital deployment across multiple sectors. The firm led a $14.6 million round in stablecoin infrastructure firm Bastion in September and a $5 million strategic round in user-owned data network Vana the same month. Coinbase also participated in crypto payments firm Mesh's fundraise in August.