Coinbase holds back marketing spend for prediction markets platform

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has said users have been “delighted” to find prediction markets within the exchange’s app following the rollout at the end of January.

Coinbase initially partnered with Kalshi to add the offering to its platform, which went live on 28 January. 

The exchange has also acquired The Clearing Company to build out further prediction markets infrastructure. 

Speaking on the company’s Q4 earnings call yesterday, 12 February, Armstrong said Coinbase was planning to add further markets and a “dedicated sports hub” for users.

While Armstrong said Super Bowl LX had been a strong positive, there was still more work to be done across customer awareness and product development.

He added: “Our prediction markets really just rolled out to 100% of customers about a couple of weeks ago.

“It’s early days, but so far the interest has been great. Super Bowl weekend was a really great moment where a lot of customers got to experience it [the offering] for the first time.

“We’re making lots of improvements rapidly on both the UX – adding more markets, having a dedicated sports hub where people can see live scores and things like that – and frankly, just marketing it, getting the word out.

“I think a lot of Coinbase customers are delighted to find out this is available in the app because they already store quite a lot of assets with us. And so, we just need to make them aware of it. And I think it’s going to be a really good outcome.”

Speaking to analysts, Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas was slightly more reserved than Armstrong on the subject as she wouldn’t be drawn in on how she viewed prediction markets in the future.

While some other listed businesses that have moved into the space, such as DraftKings, have championed the sector, Haas said Coinbase would wait for more data before laying out future targets.

She remarked: “It’s been two weeks, and so we have not marketed this outside of our existing users at this time.

“What we’re seeing for existing users is that it appears to be incremental. It’s the opportunity to trade something else that they didn’t have before.

“But I want to share that again, we are a few weeks in, and so I don’t want to have any comments at this point in time about what we think this has the potential to do.

“But we think it should be both a cross-sell and an incremental user [product], but we have not turned on marketing dollars yet to drive it as an incremental customer acquisition channel.”

The post Coinbase holds back marketing spend for prediction markets platform first appeared on EGR Intel.

 Exchange says it will market to current users and sees product as an incremental addition, but mass market approach to be held back for the time being
The post Coinbase holds back marketing spend for prediction markets platform first appeared on EGR Intel.