Coinbase Drops Bombshell: XRP Futures Coming Soon!

Hold onto Your Hats, Crypto Fans!

Coinbase is about to shake things up big time with plans to launch futures contracts for Ripple's XRP token. They've just filed with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, begging for the go-ahead.

On April 3, Coinbase Derivatives LLC pulled the trigger on a self-certification filing to the CFTC under Rule 40.2(a). They're gunning for a new cash-settled monthly contract to hit the scene on April 21, but only if the regulators give it the thumbs up.

These bad boys, trading under the symbol XRL, will pack a punch with each contract representing a whopping 10,000 XRP. That's around $20,000 at today's prices, as long as XRP stays chill near the $2.00 mark.

Coinbase Institutional, the exchange's playground for the big dogs and pro traders, dropped the news. In a statement that hit the streets on April 3, they're hyping up the product as a "regulated, capital-efficient way to gain exposure" to one of the hottest digital assets out there.

Get this: Coinbase is planning to list three monthly contracts at once. They'll be margined and settled in USD, with trading hours from 5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. CT, Sunday through Friday. But hold up, there's a one-hour break each weekday between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. CT to catch your breath.

When it comes time to settle up, these contracts will go head-to-head with the MarketVector Coinbase XRP benchmark index. That's an hourly reference rate based on volume-weighted median prices straight from Coinbase's own spot market.

Coinbase isn't going in blind. They've been chatting up Futures Commission Merchants and other market bigwigs who are all in on bringing XRP futures to the Coinbase party.

But here's the kicker: XRP's price barely flinched after the news broke. Maybe it's because XRP futures aren't exactly a new kid on the block. Heavy hitters like Binance, OKX, Bybit, and BitMEX have been slinging similar contracts to global users for ages.

Oh, and did you hear? Coinbase Institutional just threw open the doors to its multi-party computation cryptography library. They're all about boosting security across the crypto world. The tools, which help sign transactions without spilling the beans on private keys, are now up for grabs on GitHub, complete with a how-to guide for devs looking to beef up their systems with MPC.

All this is going down while Coinbase is navigating some seriously choppy waters in the broader market.

Coinbase stock took a nosedive, dropping 31% in Q1. That's the worst quarter they've seen since the FTX fiasco, thanks to a slump in trading activity across the crypto sector. And just this past week, COIN took another hit, slipping over 8%.