Coinbase has opened IPO share allocations to eligible US retail customers, letting them request shares at the offering price before a company begins trading on a public exchange, according to an announcement from the company on Monday.
The feature debuted with the IPO of Oura, the smart-ring maker whose stock began trading the week of September 21 on Nasdaq under the ticker OURA, with the offering sized at 50 million shares in a $40 to $44 price range.
Customers request shares from a new IPOs page in the Coinbase app, funding their account to cover the request and then submitting what Coinbase calls a Conditional Offer to Buy once the expected price range is published, with the ability to edit or cancel that offer during the open period. Allocations are filled according to an unspecified internal methodology once the order book closes, and are not guaranteed in full, partial or any amount, depending on demand and how many shares underwriters make available to Coinbase. The mechanism is run through Coinbase Capital Markets, a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, acting as a best-efforts selling-group member alongside clearing partner Apex Clearing Corporation, and customers must pass a standard FINRA screening questionnaire before participating.
Coinbase built in a deterrent against short-term flipping: customers who sell IPO shares within 30 days face a 60-day ban from participating in future offerings, and repeat flippers receive smaller and less frequent allocations than customers who hold longer. A Coinbase representative described the move as a natural extension of the company's "Everything Exchange" positioning, saying it would give US customers "early exposure to high-interest companies before they hit public exchanges."
The IPO feature adds a fourth pillar to a securities push Coinbase has built out over the past year alongside tokenized stocks, single-stock perpetual futures and prediction markets, each aimed at letting customers trade an asset at any stage of its life cycle rather than treating crypto and traditional securities as separate product lines. Coinbase shares (COIN) touched a four-month high the day the feature launched, part of a broader crypto and crypto-equity rally that also lifted Bitcoin back above $81,000 over the same stretch.
