Coinbase’s onchain borrowing has surged past $600M since January 2025, reflecting DeFi’s mainstream rise.
As of mid-August 2025, Coinbase’s onchain borrowing has exceeded $600 million, underscoring the remarkable expansion of the DeFi industry. In the interim, it has experienced a slight decline in its global trading market.
DeFi’s Entry Into Mainstream Crypto Market Indicated by Coinbase Borrowing Surge
Coinbase has demonstrated a significant increase in onchain borrowing, which implies that decentralized finance is becoming increasingly prevalent in significant financial markets. The daily borrow originations in Coinbase have experienced a substantial increase since the beginning of 2025, as indicated by the data from Dune Analytics.
The graph exhibits a continuous upward trajectory, surpassing the $600 million threshold in mid-August. Borrow originations have experienced an exponential increase since April 2025, resulting in a surge in growth.
The daily lending sum on the platform has increased to over $600 million in recent months, a significant increase from the less than $100 million at the beginning of the year. This velocity indicates robust institutional interest, user adoption, and favorable market conditions that stimulate demand for crypto-backed loans.
Max Branzburg, a senior executive at Coinbase, contributed to the trend by publishing a post on social media. He asserted that the future of finance is on blockchain, and it could be perilous to disregard the transformation.
The future of finance is onchain
Ignore at your own risk pic.twitter.com/KhTAFvMJQ2
— Max Branzburg (@maxbranzburg) August 16, 2025
The borrow feature on Coinbase allows users to access liquidity without selling their cryptocurrencies. The growing demand suggests that more institutional stakeholders and investors are becoming more at ease with blockchain-based lending systems.
They would prefer to provide financing on blockchain rather than traditional credit. Coinbase’s recent implementation of DEX trading for Base tokens and forthcoming Solana support are consistent with this expansion of decentralized finance services.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, reposted the chart, suggesting that he agrees with Branzburg. Top investors are attracted to the regulatory platform offered by Coinbase, which includes additional security and compliance measures. This would establish the corporation as the intermediary between the traditional financial sector and the blockchain economy.
Even though Coinbase has recorded increased trading volumes, its dominance in the global crypto trading arena has waned. The crypto exchange, which is headquartered in the United States, commenced the year with a 7% market share of global trading volume. Nevertheless, its market share decreased to 5.8% as of July.
Coinbase’s total trading volume in July was $101.7 billion, as indicated by data from CoinGecko, an increase from the previous month. However, the exchange has declined to the ninth largest in the globe. This may account for Coinbase’s pursuit of significant acquisitions, such as the $2.9 billion Deribit acquisition deal, as part of its “everything exchange” strategy.
Coinbase is not the only organization that has encountered these obstacles in the interim. In the second quarter of 2025, seven of the ten largest exchanges in the CoinGecko research reported decreased activity.
For example, the trading volume of Crypto.com decreased by more than 61% in Q1 and Q2, reaching $560.2 billion and $216.4 billion, respectively. The volume of the ten largest exchanges decreased by 27.7%, or $1.5 trillion, resulting in a total volume of $3.9 trillion.
