As interest in digital assets and decentralized finance grows among both retail and institutional users, offering a platform that caters to both communities is a major point of differentiation for companies in the DeFi space. Further, companies that provide services that bridge the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance will be best positioned to serve those retail and institutional users who increasingly need to efficiently manage both traditional and digital assets.
This context helps understand two recent announcements from digital asset platform Coinbase. First, this week, the company announced that it had selected Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive bridging solution for its Coinbase Wrapped Assets. “We chose Chainlink because they are an industry leader for cross-chain connectivity,” Coinbase Senior Director, Product Management, Josh Leavitt said. “Their infrastructure provides a reliable means to expand Coinbase Wrapped Asset offerings.”
A leading oracle platform, Chainlink connects blockchain-based smart contracts with real-world, external data, events, and systems. Integrated with numerous blockchains—including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche, and more—Chainlink powers thousands of decentralized applications and protocols across DeFi, NFT, and enterprise use cases. The company’s CCIP leverages the same decentralized oracle networks that secure more than 70% of DeFi around the world, and has enabled more than $27 trillion in transaction volume.
Coinbase Wrapped Assets are tokenized versions of cryptocurrencies issued and managed by Coinbase. A 1:1 equivalent of the underlying digital asset, Coinbase Wrapped Assets are built to operate on a blockchain other than its native blockchain. For example, a Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin can be used on a blockchain, such as Ethereum, that does not natively support Bitcoin.
Coinbase Wrapped Assets include cbBTC, cbETH, cbDOGE, cbLTC, cbADA, and cbXRP. Combined, they have a market capitalization of $7 billion. In partnering with Chainlink, Coinbase will use Chainlink CCIP to provide a foundation for bridging Coinbase Wrapped Assets across and beyond ecosystems.
“CCIP was selected by Coinbase for their cross-chain needs due to CCIP’s security and reliability,” Chainlink Head of Strategic Initiatives William Reilly said. “As the leading publicly-listed firm for digital assets, Coinbase takes security and reliability for their products seriously. I am excited about accelerating the growth of Coinbase’s wrapped assets and look forward to helping bring global finance onchain.”
Coinbase’s partnership announcement with Chainlink comes just days after the company reported that it was expanding its institutional collaboration on digital assets with international banking group Standard Chartered. “By leveraging Standard Chartered’s global banking expertise and Coinbase’s leadership in the digital asset space, we are creating a secure and seamless framework for institutions to access and manage digital assets with confidence,” Coinbase Institutional Co-CEO Brett Tejpaul said. “Together, we are driving the evolution of the financial ecosystem and enabling institutions to unlock new opportunities in this rapidly growing market.”
The partnership builds on an existing relationship between the two firms in which Standard Chartered provides banking connectivity to facilitate real-time SGD transfers for Coinbase customers. Standard Chartered has a reputation as a “pro-crypto” financial institution that was among the first major global banks to offer deliverable crypto trading for institutional clients. In addition to its collaboration with Coinbase, the bank has also partnered with crypto platform Crypto.com to enable users in 90+ countries to deposit and withdraw in major currencies through Crypto.com’s app.
Founded in 2012, Coinbase made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2014. Today, the company has $516 billion in assets on its platform and facilitates $295 billion in quarterly trading volume. Co-Founder Brian Armstrong is Chief Executive Officer.
Coinbase also recently published its State of Crypto Q4 2025 report: “Younger investors are rewriting the investing playbook.” The cross-generational report surveyed 4,350 US adults, including 2,005 with investment accounts, on their thoughts about the financial markets and what role digital assets played in their own investing strategies.
Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash
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