Coinbase has secured the UK’s MiFID license

Coinbase has received a MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) license in the United Kingdom, as it prepares for the country’s full crypto regime next year.

The permission allows Coinbase to offer British users traditional financial instruments outside its main crypto offerings. Coinbase said the new license marks its “biggest ever expansion of Coinbase UK’s product suite.”

In a blog post on Tuesday, the firm said the UK’s investment services authorization will allow the exchange to offer retail users the ability to trade equities for the first time.

For advanced and institutional traders, the new permission opens the door to derivatives, including perpetual futures tied to crypto, equities, and commodities.

Today marks our biggest ever expansion of Coinbase UK's product suite.

We've now secured an investment services authorisation in the UK, enabling us to soon offer both equities and derivatives.

Another step to bringing the everything exchange worldwide. pic.twitter.com/sns3IGRHHM

— Coinbase 🛡️ (@coinbase) July 7, 2026

Coinbase said the authorization sits inside its existing regulated UK entity, which also holds an e-money license.

The license is the latest piece of a strategy Coinbase has been assembling in Britain for more than a year, to “building the everything exchange.”

Coinbase’s UK arm, run through subsidiary CB Payments, Ltd., registered with the FCA as an electronic money institution in February 2025, according to earlier Cryptopolitan reporting.

In November 2025, Coinbase launched savings accounts in the UK and added decentralized exchange trading in April 2026. In the same month, Coinbase expanded its lending market to UK customers, letting them borrow USDC against Bitcoin and Ether holdings, Cryptopolitan reported.

Coinbase pitches all of this as the “everything exchange,” where users can cover payments, savings, borrowing, crypto, and now traditional investments, with tokenized real-world assets promised later, under the same platform.

The argument is that UK investors currently split their money across a bank app, a brokerage account, a savings product, and a crypto wallet.

Coinbase prepares ahead of the UK’s full crypto regime

Coinbase’s announcement today comes about a week after the FCA published its final crypto rulebook.

On June 30, the regulator set out capital, market-abuse, and stablecoin standards for crypto firms. The landmark crypto rules are expected to become effective on October 25, 2027.

Until that regime takes effect, the FCA’s crypto oversight remains limited to financial promotions and anti-money-laundering controls.

Firms can apply for authorization under the new rules between September 30, 2026, and February 28, 2027.

The MiFID license Coinbase obtained is separate from that crypto-specific gateway, which is why the exchange can offer regulated equities and derivatives now rather than waiting for 2027.

“This is a significant moment for crypto regulation in the UK,” David Geale, the FCA’s executive director of payments and digital finance, said when the rulebook was published, adding that the regulator “can’t regulate away risk.”

The FCA has said its rules are among the most detailed national crypto frameworks anywhere, sitting alongside the European Union’s MiCA regulation.

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