Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital arm of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, announced its investment areas for 2026.
At this point, Coinbase Ventures announced 8 important cryptocurrency investment areas.
“…These are the categories where we believe the next big breakout companies and protocols will emerge and where we are actively considering investing,” Coinbase said in a blog post.
These investment priorities include “1- RWA Perpetual Futures (RWA-based perpetual transactions- Perps offering derivatives exposure to real-world assets), 2- specialized exchanges and trading terminals (Next-generation trading platforms and tools focused on specific asset classes or structures.), 3- Proprietary Automated Market Makers, Prediction Market Aggregators (Aggregation layers that aggregate liquidity from prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket), 4- Next-generation DeFi (Protocols that integrate derivatives trading with lending, allowing users to simultaneously earn returns on collateral and maintain their leverage), 5- Privacy-Preserving On-Chain Infrastructure, 6- On-Chain Reputation and Off-Chain Data-Based Lending Protocols, 7- DePIN-Based AI Data Aggregation Infrastructure, and 8- AI tools.”
The report highlights the growing interest in on-chain real-world assets, the development of dedicated AMMs and prediction market aggregators, the evolution of perpetual futures into composable DeFi markets, and the integration of artificial intelligence into blockchain development and security.
Coinbase Ventures highlighted the innovation potential in these areas and stated that it is actively seeking investment opportunities.
According to the data, Coinbase Ventures has made 618 investments since 2018 and has a portfolio of 422 startups. Its most recent investment was in DeFi compliance platform 0xbow on November 18, and in October, it also invested in payment infrastructure companies Zynk and ZAR, as well as prediction market platform Kalshi.
*This is not investment advice.