Seven of the world's largest banks are running on Coinbase infrastructure, according to Brett Tejpaul, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional. Tejpaul said the main force behind institutional crypto adoption has moved away from Bitcoin ETFs and toward stablecoin payments. The banks, in his telling, are having a 'Kodak moment' — and most of them know it.
From ETF trade to payment rail
The ETF era made crypto legible to institutions. Tejpaul argues that phase is giving way to something more practical. He described a transaction in which money leaves a Citi account, converts to USDC, crosses the blockchain in about a second, and lands in a corporate account on the other side.
That's a settlement story, not a speculation story. Tejpaul put the volume moving through stablecoins at $400 million an hour. He called stablecoins a 'speck of dust' relative to global payments — small today, but the kind of speck that payment providers notice first. Banks, he said, follow.
Bitcoin's awkward spot
Tejpaul didn't sugarcoat Bitcoin's position. He called the macro setup great and the performance disappointing. Institutions, in his view, still treat Bitcoin as a tech trade rather than a monetary asset. That gap between narrative and allocation is the thing institutional desks keep running into.
The 'Kodak moment' framing lands harder against that backdrop. Banks that built their businesses on moving money are watching a cheaper rail appear underneath them. Kodak, famously, saw digital photography coming and still got run over.
Deribit, agentic commerce, and a second wave
Coinbase is also working to connect U.S. funds to Deribit, which Tejpaul said holds 85% of the options market. That link matters for institutions that want regulated U.S. exposure to crypto derivatives without leaving their existing custody and clearing arrangements.
He described a 'second wave' of institutional capital made up of net-new entrants, alongside a Coinbase pivot he compared to 'Amazon to AWS' — the retail business becoming the platform other businesses build on. Agentic commerce, where software agents transact on behalf of users, is arriving at the same time as the big players, Tejpaul said.
The plan to 'activate the whole U.S.' through Coinbase infrastructure is the connective tissue. He also touched on quantum risk, a 90% ETF custody share, and a 'safe forever' standard — the kind of long-horizon plumbing questions that matter to institutions once they've decided to stay.
The bank question
The seven banks on Coinbase infrastructure are the concrete part of the story. Which banks, in what capacity, and under what agreements — Tejpaul didn't say, and Coinbase hasn't published a list. That's the detail the market will want next.
For now the direction is clear: ETF flows got institutions in the door. Stablecoin payments are what keeps them there, if Tejpaul's read holds. The next test is whether more banks follow the first seven, and whether they do it before the payment providers finish eating their lunch.
