Coinbase Targets Stablecoin Growth and Onchain Adoption in 2026, Armstrong Outlines Ambitious Plans
Coinbase has announced its strategic priorities for 2026, focusing on scaling stablecoins and payments while expanding the 'everything exchange' globally across crypto, equities, prediction markets, and commodities including spot, futures, and options.
In a message dated January 1, 2026, CEO Brian Armstrong outlined a vision to make Coinbase the number one financial app. Central to this plan is leveraging Base, an Ethereum layer-2 network, and the Base App as part of the company's onchain expansion to onboard more users globally.
The company plans significant investments in automation and product quality to support growth and its onchain ambitions. David Duong highlighted that regulatory clarity and institutional adoption are converging forces expected to drive 2026 growth, with ETF approvals and tokenization playing key roles. While Coinbase is considering introducing a Base-native token, no timeline has been announced.
Coinbase's optimistic outlook is bolstered by strong Q3 2025 results, which showed revenue of $1.9 billion, a 26% increase quarter-on-quarter. However, some analysts caution that Armstrong's ambitious goals may be overly optimistic for a single year, noting that true adoption depends on solving real-world problems. They emphasize that while Coinbase remains a critical onramp for crypto, the broad objective of a "world onchain" might oversimplify the complexity involved.
Looking beyond 2026, the industry is expected to shift toward user-centric utility and enterprise adoption, especially in areas such as tokenized assets, healthcare data interoperability, and supply-chain use cases. The eventual success of these initiatives is seen as hinging on regulatory clarity and interoperability across systems.
