Coinbase Is Offering Pre-IPO Perpetual Futures on OpenAI and Anthropic. That's Better News for COIN Stock Than It Is for You.

Coinbase (COIN) launched pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to OpenAI and Anthropic, extending a concept it had already introduced for SpaceX after that company became public. The new contracts are aimed at eligible non-U.S. retail traders, offering synthetic price exposure to venture-backed private firms before they list on legacy exchanges. The product uses a mechanism similar to perpetual futures, with no fixed expiration date, and a funding rate to keep prices aligned with the underlying valuation index. The note says settlement happens through a stablecoin proxy like USDC, and the contracts are not direct ownership of private equity shares. Coinbase plans an automatic “rebasing” into standard per-share stock perps once a company files its final IPO prospectus and begins trading, carrying positions through the transition.