Coinbase’s Deribit buy shows growing derivatives market

Coinbase’s agreement to buy Deribit highlights the increasing importance of financial derivatives for cryptocurrency exchanges, according to industry executives. 

On May 8, Coinbase, the US’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, agreed to acquire crypto derivatives platform Deribit for $2.9 billion in the crypto industry’s largest corporate acquisition to date.  

The deal reflects increasing competition among digital asset exchanges and brokerages — including Coinbase, Kraken and Robinhood — to dominate the burgeoning crypto derivatives market. 

"Global derivatives trading is a key driver of growth for Coinbase,” Spencer Yang, co-founder of Fractal Bitcoin, a Bitcoin scaling solution, told Cointelegraph.

The merger established Coinbase as the world’s largest crypto derivatives platform by open interest, the exchange said in a blog post announcing the deal. 

In a May 8 X post, Jeff Park, Bitwise’s head of alpha strategies, said Coinbase’s Deribit acquisition “might be the best 'value' deal in crypto I've ever seen,” adding the deal is “a coup for Coinbase.”

In March, US crypto exchange Kraken agreed to buy NinjaTrader, a futures brokerage, for $1.5 billion.

Related: Coinbase to acquire options trading platform Deribit for $2.9B

Coinbase already has a global presence in perpetual futures, with roughly $10 billion in daily trading volume as of May 8. It also has a US-based derivatives trading platform listing more than 20 futures contracts. 

Deribit is the largest crypto options exchange, with about $30 billion in open interest, according to the blog post. 

With this acquisition, Coinbase “has captured all possible regulated and self-regulated derivatives products,” Yang added.

It also bolstered Coinbase’s presence in the global market, which is still dominated by Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume. Deribit does not serve US-based traders, according to its website. 

“Deribit is the platform of choice for global traders for Bitcoin and Ethereum options,” Yang said.

Futures contracts are standardized agreements to buy or sell an underlying asset at a future date, often using leverage in a bid to enhance returns.

Options are contracts granting the right to buy or sell — “call” or “put,” in trader parlance — an underlying asset at a certain price.

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