Coinbase opens international exchange for bitcoin and ether perpetuals

Coinbase launched Coinbase International Exchange on May 2, 2023, giving eligible institutional clients outside the United States access to bitcoin and ether perpetual futures through a Bermuda-regulated venue.

The initial contracts were settled in USDC and offered leverage of up to 5 times, according to Coinbase’s launch announcement. Trading access was provided directly through an application programming interface. Retail customers could not use the products, and United States institutions were expressly prohibited from participating.

The development mattered because it placed a major publicly traded American cryptocurrency company directly into the international market for perpetual futures while keeping the new products outside its domestic platform. It was both a product launch and a visible example of digital-asset market infrastructure dividing along jurisdictional lines.

What Coinbase launched

A perpetual future is a derivative designed to track an underlying asset without a fixed expiration date. Positions are maintained through margin and recurring payments between long and short participants rather than through settlement on a predetermined maturity date. Leverage can magnify gains and losses, while a sufficiently adverse move can trigger liquidation.

Coinbase said the new exchange listed perpetual contracts referencing bitcoin and ether on May 2. USDC served as the settlement asset, so the venue did not require a fiat-currency on-ramp for those contracts. External market makers were to provide liquidity, while Coinbase said it would not conduct proprietary trading on the venue.

The company also described dynamic margin requirements, collateral assessments and a liquidation framework. Those statements represented Coinbase’s account of the exchange’s controls at launch; the contemporaneous materials reviewed for this reconstruction do not independently establish the venue’s opening liquidity, client count, trading volume or performance during stressed conditions.

Bermuda’s regulatory role

Coinbase tied the launch to a license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. The regulator’s entity register identifies Coinbase Bermuda Limited as holding a Class F digital-asset-business license effective April 19, 2023. The permitted activities listed by the authority include operating a digital-asset exchange, providing custodial-wallet services and operating as a digital-asset-derivative-exchange provider.

That record supports the existence and scope of the Bermuda authorization, but it should not be read as a guarantee against trading, counterparty, operational or liquidation risk. Regulatory licensing establishes permission and supervisory obligations; it does not certify the value or safety of a leveraged contract.

The geographic restrictions were equally important. Coinbase International Exchange was not a new route for United States customers to obtain perpetual futures. On May 2, access was limited to qualifying institutions in selected non-US jurisdictions, subject to Coinbase’s eligibility process.

A market-structure signal

Reuters characterized the launch on May 2 as an expansion of Coinbase’s international footprint amid escalating tension between the cryptocurrency sector and United States regulators. Coinbase itself argued that other jurisdictions were advancing clearer digital-asset frameworks while maintaining that it remained committed to the United States.

The verified event does not establish that Coinbase was abandoning its home market. A narrower interpretation is better supported: the company created a separately regulated venue to compete for an important category of international derivatives business that it was not offering through its United States exchange.

No event-day price response is asserted here. The reviewed records do not provide a consistent intraday measurement window capable of isolating the launch from broader bitcoin, ether, equity or macroeconomic movements. The durable significance on May 2, 2023, was therefore institutional rather than a demonstrable one-day market move: Coinbase had turned its international derivatives plan into an operating, geographically restricted exchange.