Share this article
Coinbase Paves Way for Big Institutions to Do More With Web3, DeFi, NFTs
“We're seeing corporations who want to participate on-chain in some way,” Coinbase’s Kevin Johnson told CoinDesk TV. “But they need a safe way to do that.”
Updated Sep 12, 2023, 4:23 p.m. Published Sep 12, 2023, 4:23 p.m.
Coinbase, best-known for being one of the largest crypto exchanges for retail customers, continued its expansion into the professional space with the introduction Tuesday of a Web3 wallet designed to help institutions get into NFTs and other corners of decentralized finance, or DeFi.
Its Coinbase Prime division’s new wallet lets pros access crypto, NFTs, decentralized apps (dapps) and DeFi more broadly, all part of a push to help institutions interact with on-chain applications.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
“More and more, we're seeing corporations who want to participate on-chain in some way, whether that's by doing an NFT drop, or, in some cases, even voting in DAOs,” Kevin Johnson, vice president of institutional sales and trading at Coinbase, said Tuesday on CoinDesk TV. “But they need a safe way to do that.”
The wallet enables clients to securely store tokens from supported networks, gain instant access to funds that they self-custody and interact directly with dapps and smart contracts, according to the announcement.
“But it goes beyond what normal wallets do because it actually integrates with the safety and security of their existing Prime account,” Johnson said.
“They're very concerned about not only the safety and security of their assets, but ensuring that they have the proper controls over who can access and who can make decisions with those assets,” he added. “So, we've seen that demand from clients and we knew that this was critical in order to bring them on-chain, and now they have that product.”
If accounts have a multi-user setup with different types of permissions and configurations, all of those can be applied to the wallet to ensure that that safety applies to their direct on-chain transactions as well, Johnson said.
The new product mirrors many of the features that Coinbase’s retail wallet has, but adds functions that are specifically required by institutions that require multiple team members to access the wallet.
“We're just giving the institutions the features that they require to participate in on-chain applications,” Johnson said.
Más para ti
Lo que debes saber:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
Más para ti
A16z Crypto to Open Seoul Office, Hire Sungmo Park to Lead Asia Efforts
Andreessen Horowitz's crypto venture capital unit pointed to high levels of crypto ownership in South Korea and Singapore, and growing onchain activity in Japan.
Lo que debes saber:
- Venture fund a16z crypto is opening its first office in Asia, located in Seoul, and named Sungmo Park to lead it.
- The Seoul office aims to build partnerships and accelerate community growth across the region.
- South Korea's active onchain community and developer ecosystem probably influenced the fund's decision to choose Seoul over other Asian financial hubs.
Top Stories
