Coinbase Prediction Markets

What it is

Event contracts inside the Coinbase app, under a tab Coinbase calls Predictions. As with every broker-fronted app in this category, the first thing to get straight is that Coinbase is not the exchange for these contracts — it is the broker in front of one.

The offering entity is Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. (CFM). Coinbase's futures account agreement states that CFM is registered as a futures commission merchant with the CFTC and is a member of the NFA, and that it acts as FCM "executing, clearing, and/or carrying futures contracts or event contracts". Coinbase's FY2025 10-K, filed on 12 February 2026, says CFM "began offering event contracts" in December 2025; the landing page at the time said access was initially limited to a subset of US users, and the federal order below dates the nationwide rollout to January 2026.

The exchange is Kalshi. Coinbase's landing page and payouts article say only "an independent, regulated exchange", but its introduction article is plain: "Prediction markets on Coinbase are operated by Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated exchange", and "Coinbase honors the official resolution determined by Kalshi and cannot manually override outcomes." The rest of the record agrees:

• the US District Court for Nevada, in its order of 7 February 2026, describes CFM as "an intermediary for customers trading regulated derivatives listed on a DCM, including event contracts on Kalshi";
• the Northern District of Illinois, in its opinion of 2 October 2026, records that Coinbase "announced its partnership with Kalshi in December 2025";
• Coinbase's own help centre, explaining how to check a disputed crypto contract, tells you to open the contract details in the app, follow the link to the corresponding market on the Kalshi website, and read the official settlement there.
• CFM's own CFTC 1.55(k) disclosure document, stated as of 30 September 2026, says the firm is a member of "the Kalshi Exchange" and "clears retail swaps via an omnibus arrangement with Kalshi Klear" — event contracts are the retail swaps.

KalshiEX LLC is a designated contract market on the CFTC's list, designated on 3 November 2020. The CFTC's note on the same list records that on 17 January 2025 the Commission granted Kalshi's petition to modify its order of designation "to permit intermediated futures trading" — the change that opened Kalshi to brokers in the first place. Clearing is Kalshi's own clearing house, Kalshi Klear, and the omnibus arrangement means Kalshi Klear sees CFM as one account holding all of Coinbase's customers rather than each of them by name; your positions are on CFM's books.

Coinbase does own an exchange, and it is not this one. Coinbase Derivatives, LLC — formerly LMX Labs, which Coinbase bought in February 2022 — is a designated contract market in its own right, clearing through Nodal Clear according to the CFTC's note. CFM is a member of it too, by the same 1.55(k) document, but that document routes retail swaps to Kalshi Klear, nothing Coinbase publishes about prediction markets says that any of these contracts are listed on Coinbase Derivatives, and its help centre's verification route goes to Kalshi. The Q2 2026 earnings deck mentions a "crypto binaries" experience without naming the venue, so this card does not attribute it to either.

The scale is no longer small. Coinbase's Q2 2026 earnings materials, filed on 30 July 2026, report more than $100 million of annualised prediction-markets revenue as of that quarter, with contracts and revenue each more than doubling quarter on quarter, and sports leading, followed by crypto.

Availability

United States residents, everywhere except Nevada.

Coinbase's help centre states it plainly on every prediction-markets article: available to US residents only, excluding Nevada, and travelling abroad does not affect access. That is the inverse of the location-based blocking that Robinhood and DraftKings apply — the test here is residency, not current location. The consequences run both ways: a Coinbase customer on holiday outside the US keeps trading, and a customer who moves abroad does not keep their positions — Coinbase says CFM will liquidate active contracts and close open orders for anyone who no longer resides in the US.

Nevada is excluded by litigation, not by choice. Coinbase's application article says the Nevada State Gaming Control Board "has issued a temporary restraining order against Coinbase", that Nevada customers with open positions may hold them to close or sell them, and that Coinbase is working to restore access. The federal order of 7 February 2026 records that Coinbase began offering event contracts throughout the United States, Nevada included, in January 2026; that Nevada's gaming regulators brought a state enforcement action alleging unlicensed gaming; and that the federal court declined to intervene, dismissing CFM's own suit under Younger abstention and denying its emergency motion. Nevada has been off the list since.

The rest of the map is in court, not on the help page. CFM sued Michigan, Illinois and Connecticut on 18 December 2025, straight after announcing the Kalshi partnership. In Illinois, the federal court granted preliminary injunctions to Coinbase, Kalshi and the CFTC in part on 2 October 2026; the Michigan and Connecticut cases are on appeal in the Sixth and Second Circuits with CFM as appellant. New York's Attorney General sued CFM in April 2026, Wisconsin named CFM alongside Kalshi the same month, and the City of Baltimore's case against Kalshi names CFM too. None of those states is excluded on Coinbase's help centre as of 4 October 2026, but any of them could be, and the help centre is the place to check.

Onboarding is a separate CFM predictions account on top of an ordinary Coinbase account, and it is an application, not a toggle. Coinbase lists a US address and a Social Security or taxpayer identification number, completed photo ID verification and your legal name on the account, and then reviews age, trading experience, occupation, income and net worth for suitability — which can end in a rejection. It does not publish the minimum age. Three application attempts a day is the limit; exceed it and the wait is seven days.

Once approved, there is a per-market cap on how many contracts you can hold, set from the financial information you certify, counting filled contracts and open orders, and it can change with market conditions.

Pricing

There is no published price. This is the gap that matters most on this card, and it is not one we can close from outside an account.

What Coinbase does say:

• the help centre: a fee breakdown is displayed on the order confirmation page before you place an order — the same sentence appears on the Sports Combos article;
• the landing page, as archived in March 2026: Coinbase Financial Markets prediction trades "include transaction fees", available on the trade order page;
• the futures account agreement, section 13: you are charged exchange, regulatory and self-regulatory fees as set by the exchange and regulator, and you pay CFM's commissions and fees at the rates posted on a Coinbase fee page. That page served a sign-in wall when we tried to read it.

So there are two layers — CFM's commission and Kalshi's exchange fee — and neither is quoted anywhere public. Kalshi's own schedule is on the Kalshi card, and Kalshi notes there that customers arriving through an FCM may be charged different fees by that FCM. What a Coinbase customer pays on top of Kalshi's fee is therefore not a number this card can give you, and the fee fields are left empty rather than filled with a figure from a review site.

Two things that do not depend on the schedule. Each contract pays $1 if the outcome occurs and $0 if not, minus fees, on Coinbase's own worked example. And funding is from your USD or USDC balance — settled funds only — moved into a separate predictions balance before you trade; unrealised gains cannot be used to buy new contracts until they settle.

Markets & resolution

Coinbase resolves nothing. Kalshi determines every result against the source of truth in the contract's rules, and Coinbase says it cannot override that outcome. Its help centre gives the usual sources by type: official league results for sports (final regulation score), the National Weather Service for weather, certified results for elections and official statistics for economic data, with the contract's own terms deciding in each case. "View Full Rules" in the app opens the complete terms on Kalshi's website, and that is the document that governs.

Coinbase's landing page, as archived in March 2026, groups the listing as sports, crypto, politics and culture, and the help centre adds weather and economic data; its Q2 2026 materials say sports volume leads, followed by crypto, with short-dated "fast markets" growing.

The crypto contracts are where the app and the settlement disagree. Coinbase's help centre spells it out: BTC and ETH 15-minute contracts settle on the CF Benchmarks Real Time Index, which averages 60 one-second readings over the final minute before the settlement time. That is not the price the Coinbase app shows, which is a last trade on a single venue, and Coinbase warns that a few cents of difference can flip a contract between Yes and No. If you are trading a 15-minute crypto contract while watching the Coinbase spot price, you are watching the wrong number.

Sports Combos bundle two to ten sports legs into one position that pays only if every leg wins. Prices come from a request-for-quote to market makers rather than from a book; a market maker can decline the quote after you submit; correlated legs cannot be combined; and a leg that cannot resolve normally may settle at a value between 0 and 1. A Combo can be cashed out only as a whole, and only while every leg is still live.

Order handling is simple and mostly opaque. You enter a dollar amount or a number of contracts, and you cannot hold both sides of the same open market at once. Coinbase's archived FAQ adds that an order is filled at the best price available and a large one may be split across prices.

Trading runs around the clock except from 3 AM to 5 AM ET on Thursdays, plus maintenance windows and holidays. Payouts land in a Prediction Market USD balance, usable immediately for further prediction trades, and are swept to your primary Coinbase account every two hours between 6 AM and 4 PM ET on business days — not at weekends, not on US bank holidays, and not after 4 PM.

Integrations

There is no public API, WebSocket or SDK for Coinbase event contracts. Coinbase has developer APIs for spot and for its derivatives exchange, but nothing it publishes about prediction markets offers programmatic access to them. The programmatic route to the same contracts is the Kalshi API, on an account opened with Kalshi rather than Coinbase.

Records are daily statements. Coinbase's help centre calls the daily statement the official record of settled payouts, listed under "The Following Event Contracts Settled Today", and says the in-app transaction history can lag it at busy settlement times. We found no Coinbase page saying which tax form, if any, it issues for event contracts, so the tax-reporting flag is off.

Limitations

• No published fees. You learn the price of a contract on the confirmation screen and nowhere earlier, and neither the commission nor the exchange layer is quoted in public.
• Nevada is excluded, and several other states are litigating. Michigan, Connecticut, New York, Wisconsin and Illinois are all in court with CFM over these contracts. The help centre is the only list, and it can change faster than any card.
• Residency, not location, decides access. Moving abroad means forced liquidation of open positions by CFM.
• One exchange. Every contract here is a Kalshi contract; the app adds a funding route and an interface, not a second source of liquidity.
• Crypto contracts settle on an index, not on the Coinbase price you see beside them.
• Combos are quoted by market makers, who can decline after you submit.
• Payout sweeps run on banking hours, so a Saturday win reaches your main balance on Monday.
• Nobody here has opened a CFM account. Everything above is read from Coinbase's help centre, futures account agreement, CFM's 1.55(k) disclosure and SEC filings, from federal court records, and from the CFTC's list of trading organisations, on 4 October 2026. Coinbase's web pages refuse non-browser clients, so the help centre was read through a reader proxy and the landing-page FAQ only from a March 2026 archive.

Alternatives

Kalshi is the exchange behind every contract here, and going direct gives you a published fee schedule and an API. Robinhood Prediction Markets is the same broker-in-front model with a published commission formula and three exchanges behind it. Polymarket US is the alternative for a US reader who wants a venue rather than a broker.