Crypto Exchanges
By James Thorp
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The $2.9 Billion Deal Behind All of This. None of this happens without the acquisition. Coinbase bought Deribit in August 2025 for roughly $2.
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Who Gets Access and What's Still Pending. The upgraded spot offering is open to retail investors, qualified investors, and institutional…
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Dubai's Role as the Regulatory Anchor. VARA has been building out its virtual asset regulatory framework over the past few years, and…
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Deribit just got a new piece of paper from Dubai's regulators. And it changes a lot about how the platform actually works.
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Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority — VARA — handed Deribit a Broker-Dealer Licence, letting the crypto derivatives giant route most of its spot orders directly to…
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None of this happens without the acquisition. Coinbase bought Deribit in August 2025 for roughly $2.9 billion — $700 million in cash plus 11 million Coinbase Class A shares.
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The logic from Coinbase's side was clear enough. Deribit brought derivatives expertise and a massive, loyal user base.
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There's one piece that's still murky. Assets bought through the upgraded spot platform could potentially be used as collateral for derivatives trading on Deribit.
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See also: Coinbase Bug Reports Set to Triple in 2026 as AI Floods HackerOne Queue
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So for now, the spot and derivatives sides stay functionally separate in that specific sense. The integration is real, but it's partial.
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Deribit's position in the broader crypto derivatives market has always been built on options, specifically.
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The spot routing arrangement is probably best seen as a way to make Deribit stickier for its existing users.
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VARA has been building out its virtual asset regulatory framework over the past few years, and Deribit's dual-licence structure — VASP for exchange services, now supplemented by…
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It's a bit unusual, frankly. Most platforms either have exchange licences or broker-dealer frameworks, not both running simultaneously for different functions.
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Read also: Franklin Templeton Gets SEC Green Light to Buy Into Its Own 12-Condition Tokenized Fund
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