Coinbase has appointed Anthony Armstrong, the former chief financial officer of xAI and X, to its board of directors, citing his mix of Wall Street, government and frontier technology experience as a fit for the company’s next phase. Armstrong spent nearly a decade at Morgan Stanley building its global technology M&A practice, later served as a senior advisor in the Department of Government Efficiency within the Executive Office of the President, and most recently oversaw finance across Elon Musk’s xAI, X.AI Corp. and X Corp. Coinbase said his focus on efficient execution and doing more with less aligns with how the firm operates. The appointment coincides with Coinbase Financial Markets offering regulated crypto derivatives in Canada under foreign dealer exemptions as a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant, a step framed as the first time a major crypto-native platform has brought direct native crypto futures to eligible Canadian clients. The suite covers 23 perpetual and dated futures tied to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and other assets, five commodity futures and the Coinbase 50 Index, with nano-sized contracts and leverage of up to 10x limited to clients holding at least $5 million in net financial assets or to registered investment advisers and dealers. The Canada push tracks rising local adoption and moves by Webull and Robinhood into the market, while Coinbase shares rose more than 1% in premarket trading as the stock approached long-standing technical resistance.