Coinbase has launched gold and silver perpetual contracts for non-U.S. users today, with up to 25x leverage, settled in USDC.

This event is worth highlighting not because of its trading volume itself, but because it reveals a key point: the Wall Street derivatives pipeline is being crypto-ized.
Traditionally, gold and silver futures trading has been concentrated on CME and the London gold and silver markets, with high barriers to retail participation and long settlement cycles. Coinbase, in the form of perpetual contracts, has integrated these two of the oldest hedging assets into a native crypto trading framework—24/7 trading, on-chain settlement, USDC-denominated.
The underlying logic is: compliant exchanges are leveraging crypto infrastructure to penetrate the liquidity layer of traditional finance. Perpetual contracts are an innovation unique to crypto derivatives; now they are being used to package traditional assets, meaning Wall Street’s “pipeline” no longer only involves CME and LME.
But the risks are also clear. Will the funding rate mechanism of perpetual contracts be effective for low-volatility assets like gold and silver? With 25x leverage, a sudden flash crash could wipe out retail positions. Coinbase initially offering the product to non-U.S. users indicates that U.S. regulators still have concerns.
This is not just a simple “launching of a new product,” but a battle among crypto exchanges for pricing power over traditional financial assets.
$usdc #cme #lme