How Coinbase Is Looking to Rewire Global Markets Onchain

John D’Agostino has seen this before — and last time, it ended with an entire system getting dragged into the future whether it liked it or not.

When D’Agostino, now leading Coinbase's institutional efforts, first stepped onto the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange in the early 2000s, traders were still screaming orders, flashing hand signals, and guarding access like a private club. His job was to help move that world onto screens.

“I heard all the excuses 20 years ago, 'Oh, it's never going to go on screen. Never. The floor is essential. You got to have those hand signals.' Of course not,” he told Coinage in a new interview.

Today, D’Agostino says the same transformation is playing out again — only this time, it’s not about digitization. It’s about moving global markets onchain.

“What we know from billions of transactions at this point is the technology has the same resiliency, if not better, as our existing systems… and it's vastly superior in terms of security,” he said. For an industry that once debated whether crypto would survive, the capital markets conversation has shifted.

Even JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon — a one-time crypto and Bitcoin skeptic, has come around to embracing the upside of tokenization. In his annual shareholder letter he made mention of market competitors moving faster — and a need to catch up.

"While we have been able to grow, many but not all of the new players have been quite successful and continue to raise both money and their ambitions," Dimon wrote. "In addition, a whole new set of competitors is emerging based on blockchain, which includes stablecoins, smart contracts and other forms of tokenization."

As tokenization accelerates, more traders aren't waiting for traditional systems to open. The ability to trade continuously is becoming less of a novelty and more of an expectation. Coinbase’s bet is that this shift doesn’t stop at crypto. The company is positioning itself as the entry point for everything — stocks, commodities, and beyond — all brought onchain in tokenized form.

“We have a very, very good shot at being the go to entry point for anyone looking to purchase assets online onchain,” D’Agostino said.

That ambition hinges on something bigger than just access. Tokenization, in Coinbase’s view, isn’t just about putting assets on a blockchain — it’s about rebuilding the plumbing underneath markets themselves. By turning equities, commodities, and other instruments into interoperable tokens, the system starts to unlock entirely new efficiencies. Collateral can move more freely. Positions can be netted across asset classes. Capital that was previously locked up can be redeployed.

“What you start to get is margin cross collateralization,” D’Agostino explained. “And if you can free up, in theory, hundreds of billions of dollars of locked in capital… it improves liquidity, it improves volumes, costs go down, and you're left with a faster, cheaper, more efficient market.”

For institutions, that’s the real unlock. But for Coinbase, the strategy starts further upstream: distribution. The company’s goal is to make onchain access as simple as opening an app — and then fill that app with assets people actually want to own.

“You can have the best store in the world with the best location in the world. And if people walk in, there's nothing to buy, they're going to leave pretty quickly,” he said.

Experiments in that arena have been hit-or-miss in the world of crypto. Coinbase's bets have seemingly echoed that. Last year, Coinbase's Base chain leaned heavily into "creator coins" or tokens that were tied to posts both on the Base app and on the Instagram-like challenger app Zora. But after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced the Base app would pivot away from featuring creator coins, the space largely imploded. (Coinage actually boasted the largest creator coin on Zora for months at a market cap north of $10 million before the pivot. Despite not selling any tokens, $COINAGE crashed more than 90% as Coinbase de-prioritized creator coins.)

To be fair, that is also why Coinage had previously pioneered its own tokenized co-op membership model. Instead of focusing on speculative tokens, or collectables, Coinage has pioneered tokenized memberships that allow holders to unlock patronage dividends from a tokenized co-op. As many NFTs continue to decline in value, Coinage's tokenized memberships have risen 100% in value since launch in 2022.

But to D’Agostino, part of that experimentation is what makes Coinbase's opportunity uniquely massive. Pairing its distribution platform with new asset classes sets it apart from other exchanges that may only be foused on equities — or crypto — but rarely both.

At the same time, the company isn’t framing this as a winner-take-all moment. “I don't think it's a winner take all. I think exchanges are oligopolies, not monopolies,” D’Agostino said. Coinbase isn’t trying to replace legacy exchanges outright — it’s trying to sit alongside them as the system evolves.

And that evolution may be happening faster than most expect. While crypto still represents a small slice of global markets, the growth vectors are accelerating.

For D’Agostino, it’s a familiar pattern. The traders on the NYMEX floor didn’t think screens would replace them. Until they did. The same skepticism exists today around blockchains and tokenized markets. But if history is any guide, the outcome may already be set.

“It’s very, very clear to anyone that's looking closely that capital risk and asset transfer is shifting on chain because it's a better system,” he said.

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