SEC Approves Binary Options on Coinbase, Robinhood, and Marathon KPIs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the listing of binary options tied to the performance of 23 publicly traded companies, including crypto-linked stocks Coinbase, Robinhood, and Marathon Digital Holdings.

The newly approved contracts will allow traders to bet on whether these companies hit specific key performance indicators. For Coinbase (COIN), the metric is trading volume; for Robinhood (HOOD), it is customer count and revenue; and for Marathon (MARA), it is bitcoin production.

This creates a novel financial instrument for speculating on the operational performance of major crypto-adjacent firms, separate from direct bets on asset prices like bitcoin. The approval received relatively little attention this week as markets focused on bitcoin‘s price movements around key inflation data.

The binary options will provide U.S. investors with a new way to gain exposure to the crypto sector through traditional equity markets, expanding the toolkit for trading corporate performance linked to digital assets.