Coinbase did something pretty wild today: just hours after Lighter’s LIT TGE launch, Coinbase turned around and announced it would list LIT for spot trading—moving faster than the project itself could discover a price.
Even wilder: Lighter is a perpetuals DEX on Ethereum L2, and a direct competitor to Coinbase’s derivatives business. You run an exchange, then help an on-chain rival?
The timeline from this week makes it click: Pump.fun just launched 40x perpetuals using Hyperliquid’s engine a couple of days ago, and Hyperliquid’s on-chain options have racked up $640 million in a few months. Perps are a juicy market, and CEXs and on-chain platforms are copying each other’s playbook. Neither wants the other to have it all.
LIT’s price action is wild too: it plunged to 2.7 shortly after opening, then turned around and touched 3.8. A full 25% of the supply was airdropped to longtime users who farmed points in 2025, so retail traders were immediately fighting each other from the opening bell.
Pick a side: A) On-chain perps really can take market share from CEXs / B) Listing is the peak—if you bought around $3 at launch, how much will you have left by the end of today?
$ETH $BTC #Coinbase #PerpetualContracts
Even wilder: Lighter is a perpetuals DEX on Ethereum L2, and a direct competitor to Coinbase’s derivatives business. You run an exchange, then help an on-chain rival?
The timeline from this week makes it click: Pump.fun just launched 40x perpetuals using Hyperliquid’s engine a couple of days ago, and Hyperliquid’s on-chain options have racked up $640 million in a few months. Perps are a juicy market, and CEXs and on-chain platforms are copying each other’s playbook. Neither wants the other to have it all.
LIT’s price action is wild too: it plunged to 2.7 shortly after opening, then turned around and touched 3.8. A full 25% of the supply was airdropped to longtime users who farmed points in 2025, so retail traders were immediately fighting each other from the opening bell.
Pick a side: A) On-chain perps really can take market share from CEXs / B) Listing is the peak—if you bought around $3 at launch, how much will you have left by the end of today?
$ETH $BTC #Coinbase #PerpetualContracts