Coinbase said on Tuesday that it has chosen Centrifuge as its preferred tokenization infrastructure and has made a strategic investment in the company.
As part of the deal, Centrifuge is positioned to serve as the default issuance layer for tokenized assets in the Coinbase ecosystem, including products on Base. The first wave of institutional assets is expected to launch on Base in the coming weeks, the companies said.
Coinbase’s push into tokenized capital markets spans ETFs, credit and structured products. The Centrifuge deal gives Coinbase an infrastructure partner for external asset managers who want to issue on-chain products, although this does not appear to be exclusive.
Coinbase Asset Management announced last week that it would issue its CUSHY stablecoin credit fund through Superstate’s FundOS platform, and in March it tapped Apex Group to tokenize a share class of its Bitcoin Yield Fund on Base. Coinbase Ventures was also already an investor in Centrifuge, having backed a strategic round in 2022.
Centrifuge powers on-chain strategies for the Apollo, Janus Henderson and S&P Dow Jones indices. Its total value surpassed $1 billion in mid-2025 and now stands at $1.66 billion, according to data from DeFiLlama.
The deal comes as real-world token assets have reached around $27 billion on-chain. Tokenized Treasuries and other fixed-income products account for about $16 billion of that.
The RWA sector is currently led by Securitize and Ondo Finance, as well as major stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle through their tokenized gold product and money market fund, respectively.
“What matters now is not getting the assets on-chain, but getting the right assets on-chain in the right way,” said Bhaji Illuminati, CEO of Centrifuge.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced earlier Tuesday that the exchange was laying off 14% of its employees, saying AI tools had laid them off.
