Latest Coinbase’s new credit fund shows why banks are fighting stablecoin yield on the Clarity

Cryptocurrency While Washington attempts to navigate the stablecoin battle between banks and crypto companies over the Clarity Act, Coinbase has now announced the “Coinbase Stablecoin Credit Strategy” (CUSHY), targeting qualified investors and institutions with exposure to public, private, and opportunistic credit. The firm also said that it offers investors access to the structural alpha from tokenization, protocol incentives, and on-chain market structure. The launch is a direct bet that stablecoins, which topped $33 trillion in transaction volume in 2025 and had an average of 89 million daily holding addresses, are mature enough to serve as distribution rails for institutional credit. Coinbase already earns heavily from stablecoin economics, with $1.35 billion in stablecoin revenue in 2025, and subscriptions and services accounting for 41% of net revenue, against total net revenue of $6.88 billion. Optional tokenized shares run on Superstate’s FundOS platform, with Northern Trust as the fund administrator, Coinbase Prime as the prime services provider, and Base, Solana, and Ethereum as the supported networks. CUSHY fits Coinbase’s existing trajectory by converting stablecoin infrastructure into an asset management product with recurring institutional relationships.

Item Detail Product Coinbase Stablecoin Credit Strategy (CUSHY) Issuer Coinbase Asset Management Target investors Qualified investors and institutions Strategy focus Exposure to public, private, and opportunistic credit Additional return sources Structural alpha from tokenization, protocol incentives, and on-chain market structure Share structure Optional tokenized shares Tokenization platform Superstate FundOS Fund administrator Northern Trust Prime services provider Coinbase Prime Supported networks Base, Solana, Ethereum Strategic significance Turns stablecoin infrastructure into an institutional credit-distribution and asset-management product rather than a pure payments or trading rail The credit layer stablecoins haven’t touched yet McKinsey and Artemis estimate actual stablecoin payment activity at roughly $390 billion in 2025, which is still small compared with the raw $33 trillion on-chain volume figure that Coinbase cites. BIS similarly found annual stablecoin volumes of around $35 trillion in 2025, while acknowledging that real-economy use remained modest, with most of the raw volume reflecting trading, internal transfers, and automated activity. Only about $8 billion of that flowed through capital markets settlement in 2025, per McKinsey. Private credit is the most direct bridge between what stablecoins can do and what institutional finance actually needs. The Federal Reserve tracked bank commitments to private credit vehicles, climbing from roughly $8 billion in the first quarter of 2013 to about $95 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024. That expansion happened entirely within traditional financial plumbing via bilateral relationships, manual fund administration, and limited secondary-market access.

In theory, on-chain rails transform subscription and transfer mechanics without affecting credit underwriting. Coinbase is betting that operational improvements alone are enough to draw institutional allocators toward tokenized structures. BCG puts tokenized US Treasuries at $13.6 billion in April 2026, while RWA.xyz shows tokenized credit at $5.01 billion in distributed value and $21.2 billion in represented value, with represented value up 5.54% over the past 30 days. Credit risk survives the wrapper The technology improves subscription mechanics, transfer speed, and observability, and the underlying assets retain all the opacity,  » …

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Carla Contass

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