Coinbase Was Among the S&P 500’s Biggest Gainers Wednesday. Here’s Why.

Crystal Kim

Thu, February 26, 2026 at 6:34 AM GMT+9 2 min read

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Key Takeaways

Shares of Coinbase soared Wednesday after the company enabled trading of stocks and ETFs for all of its U.S. users.

The crypto-linked stock also got a boost from a surge in bitcoin prices.

One crypto giant just flipped the script and rolled out (wait for it) stock trading.

Coinbase Global (COIN), the largest public crypto exchange, just enabled stocks and ETFs trading for all of its U.S. users 24 hours a day, five days a week with zero commission. The company’s once-beleaguered stock was the second-biggest gainer in the S&P 500 on Wednesday, surging more than 13%.

It helps that Coinbase is getting a boost from a surge in bitcoin, which has risen about 7% in the last 24 hours to around $69,000. Though the exchange’s near-term prospects would still appear murky—there’s a bear market in crypto and fierce fintech rivals in Robinhood (HOOD) and SoFi (SOFI)—investors could be bidding up shares because one of the company’s more niche crypto products could transform the way investors trade at large. (And it has everything to do with artificial intelligence).

WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU

A financial app that enables both stock and crypto trading isn’t new, but Coinbase’s edge could be in how it applies its agentic AI capabilities across major assets.

That stocks are now available to trade on the crypto exchange is one of many recent company milestones, with Coinbase aggressively pushing out new products—prediction markets is another—as it aims to diversify its sources of revenue.

The implications of another, more niche Coinbase product announced earlier this month could deliver on a long-awaited crypto-promise: To transform the financial world at large. The exchange recently introduced what are called agentic wallets, digital crypto accounts that let AI agents autonomously spend and trade coins to its Base network, the company’s blockchain. That could eventually make crypto more user-friendly, one of the big reasons why regular folks haven’t adopted the technology en masse.

Though agentic AI wallets being applied to stock trading or cross-asset portfolio rebalancing is not on the company’s roadmap this year, it’s not hard to imagine such a future because Coinbase is actively working toward turning stocks into tokens on the blockchain.

“Big moment—you can now trade stocks on Coinbase. The everything exchange is growing,” CEO Brian Armstrong said in a social media post on Tuesday. “This is another step toward our vision of offering tokenized equities.”

Despite Wednesday’s big gain, Coinbase shares have lost nearly one-fifth of their value so far in 2026.

Read the original article on Investopedia

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