Coinbase’s 24/7 Futures, CFTC’s Spot Crypto Shift

Welcome to our Crypto news in 10, a daily podcast bringing you the latest news about crypto in under 10 minutes.

Here’s what’s moving crypto this Friday, December fifth. Coinbase flips the switch on 24/7 trading for a slate of altcoin futures in the U.S., the CFTC clears a path for spot crypto products to trade on registered futures exchanges for the first time, and Bank of America gives its wealth advisors the green light to recommend crypto ETPs. We’ll also unpack Circle’s big vision for Arc as an economic operating system, a short Cloudflare outage that briefly impacted Coinbase — and a quick price check to ground it all.

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Story one — Coinbase is officially bringing always-on futures trading to more than just Bitcoin and Ether... today. Coinbase Markets says 24/7 trading for monthly futures tied to altcoins like Avalanche, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Chainlink, Dogecoin, Hedera, Litecoin, Polkadot, Shiba Inu, Stellar, and Sui — goes live on Friday, December fifth.

That extends the exchange’s around-the-clock derivatives model beyond Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and XRP — into a wider basket of tokens. Coinbase also flagged a second milestone next week — new U.S. perpetual-style futures for these altcoins, designed to behave like perps but with long-dated expiries — slated for Thursday, December twelfth.

The aim is to give U.S. traders a compliant, CFTC-supervised venue that mirrors the nonstop access of offshore markets. According to Coinbase’s prior announcements and social posts, this rollout is part of a broader derivatives push that accelerated after its Deribit acquisition earlier this year.

Why it matters — derivatives remain the lion’s share of global crypto volume, and for U.S. institutions — from market makers to registered investment advisors — regulated, round-the-clock access is a prerequisite. If liquidity follows Coinbase’s listing schedule, spreads should tighten, and price discovery could improve during U.S. off-hours for these altcoins.

Story two — a regulatory first. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that spot crypto asset products will begin trading on CFTC-registered futures exchanges — yes, spot, not just futures or options.

The agency framed it as a move to bring cash crypto trading into supervised U.S. market structure, after years of activity migrating to offshore venues. Acting Chair Caroline Pham emphasized the goal of safer, regulated markets, and noted the Commission is also gathering input on tokenized collateral in derivatives — from stablecoins to other digital assets. It’s another data point in this year’s policy pivot that included stablecoin legislation and a more permissive stance toward digital assets.

What to watch next — which exchanges list first, which assets get approved out of the gate, and how market surveillance is implemented for cash trading under a futures-style compliance umbrella. If liquidity shows up, this could become the bridge many U.S. institutions were waiting for — a domestic, regulated alternative to offshore spot venues.

Story three — Bank of America just widened the tent. Starting January fifth, 2026, advisors at Bank of America Private Bank, Merrill, and Merrill Edge will be allowed to recommend crypto exchange-traded products to suitable clients.

That’s a shift from merely executing when clients insist — to proactively advising. The bank’s guidance frames crypto as a small satellite allocation — think 1 to 4 percent — for investors who can stomach volatility.

The move lands after a choppy November in which Bitcoin dropped more than $18,000... underscoring the very risks BofA flags even as it opens the door. The message — increasing client demand plus clearer policy equals more mainstream wealth channels offering crypto exposure... carefully.

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Story four — Circle’s big swing. CEO Jeremy Allaire used a WIRED event to lay out Arc — Circle’s bid to become a trusted, neutral economic operating system for an AI-driven digital economy.

Think of Arc as a payments and settlement layer that uses USDC at its core, with built-in foreign exchange rails, sub-second settlement targets, and enterprise-grade compliance. Allaire tied the vision to the U.S. GENIUS Act — this year’s stablecoin law — arguing that clear rules pull more financial institutions onto public-chain infrastructure.

Beyond the talk, Circle has already stood up a public testnet with more than 100 institutions — from payments firms and exchanges to DeFi protocols and asset managers — testing payments, stablecoin FX, and on-chain settlement flows.

Why it matters — if Arc continues to land heavyweight partners, we could see stablecoin-denominated cross-border payments and on-chain FX move from pilot to production. That’s the kind of real-economy throughput regulators want to see, and it’s a direct test of whether crypto rails can improve cost, speed, and uptime versus legacy correspondent banking.

Story five — a reminder that crypto still rides on Web2 plumbing. Cloudflare reported a brief dashboard and services outage this morning — about 8:47 to 9:13 GMT — that disrupted access to major platforms, including Coinbase and Anthropic’s Claude AI.

The company said an internal firewall rules change, pushed in response to a newly disclosed React Server Components vulnerability, triggered the issue — no cyberattack was involved. Shares of Cloudflare dipped in early trading as outage trackers lit up, before reports normalized.

For exchanges, the takeaway is familiar — even with decentralized settlement, the user experience depends on centralized internet infrastructure... and resilience planning is not optional.

Quick price check before we recap — into midday, Bitcoin is hovering near $92,000, down about 2 percent on the session, while Ether is pressing the $3,100 area, with a potential breakout on trader watch lists. That split tape — Bitcoin soft, Ether firmer — echoes a week of heavy rotation and macro cross-currents.

Alright, let’s wrap. Today we saw Coinbase bring 24/7 futures access to a wide basket of altcoins in the U.S., the CFTC open the door for spot crypto products on registered futures exchanges, and Bank of America move from passive execution to active advice on crypto ETPs. We also heard Circle’s pitch for Arc as an economic OS, with big-name testers already on the public testnet, and we got a real-world reminder — via Cloudflare — of why crypto’s front ends need just as much redundancy as its blockchains. Keep an eye on liquidity as those altcoin futures go live... and on which venues win the CFTC’s first spot listings.

Thanks for listening and see you tommorow!