Coinbase Ventures Sets Investment Focus for 2026

Coinbase Ventures has defined nine primary areas it aims to invest in for the year 2026, which include:

• Trading of real-world assets (RWA) perpetuals
• Niche exchanges
• Enhanced DeFi composability
• AI-driven development tools.

In a recent blog post, the investment arm of the prominent cryptocurrency exchange highlighted its commitment to finding teams working on:

• Asset tokenization
• Specialized trading platforms
• Advanced DeFi mechanisms
• Developments in agentic AI technology.

Coinbase Ventures states:

“These are the categories where we believe the next big breakout companies and protocols will emerge, and where we’re looking to actively invest.”

Since its inception in 2018, Coinbase Ventures has invested in 618 startups and currently maintains a portfolio of 422 companies. Their latest move was an investment in the DeFi compliance platform 0xbow on November 18. This follows investments in Zynk, ZAR, and Kalshi.

Steimetz emphasized:

“We anticipate seeing new approaches to RWA, such as perpetual futures, which facilitate synthetic off-chain asset exposure.”

He also pointed towards innovative solutions in market-making, where proprietary automated market makers could safeguard liquidity sources from exploitation by agile traders.

King forecasts the rise of prediction market aggregators, pooling around $600 million in fragmented liquidity.

The Future of DeFi

Coinbase Ventures investor Ethan Oak anticipates growth in DeFi systems combining perpetual futures with other protocols, unlocking investment efficiencies. Ongoing trends also indicate an uptick in tools designed to enhance privacy and prevent data breaches.

Lastly, Hoolie Tejwani notes the growing need for human verification systems to distinguish between AI-generated and human-produced content.

For more insights, check related stories on DeFi.