Coinbase Delisting on August 26: Ten Perpetual Futures Go, Open Positions Are Settled

Coinbase is withdrawing ten perpetual futures from trading on August 26, 2026. The contracts affected are those on Memecoin (MEME), The Sandbox (SAND), Moonbirds (BIRB), Blur (BLUR), Katana (KAT), SPX6900 (SPX), Zora (ZORA), Axie Infinity (AXS), Gensyn (AI) and LayerZero (ZRO). Anyone who leaves a position open does not sell it themselves: Coinbase settles it automatically, at an average price taken from the final hour of trading. Close it yourself and you set the price; wait and it is assigned to you. That is the whole difference, and on a thinly traded contract it decides real money. The delisting is part of a series. In June, Coinbase ended six perpetual futures in the same way, and nine more follow on September 3. The procedure is therefore not an isolated case but a recurring part of an exchange's product maintenance. Anyone trading derivatives should have understood the process once, rather than learning it the first time round on their own account. Coinbase Delisting on August 26: These Ten Perpetual Futures Are Going According to the announcement, which several industry outlets reproduce consistently, trading ends in ten perpetual contracts. These are without exception smaller assets from the gaming, NFT, memecoin and infrastructure segments. The full list in the exchange's own notation: MEME-PERP, SAND-PERP, BIRB-PERP, BLUR-PERP, KAT-PERP, SPX-PERP, ZORA-PERP, AXS-PERP, AI-PERP and ZRO-PERP. Liquidity as the Deciding Criterion The common denominator is liquidity. Coinbase justifies such steps with an ongoing review of trading volume, market quality and regulatory requirements. A contract in which barely anyone trades is expensive for an exchange and dangerous for investors: the spread between bid and ask widens, and a larger order moves the price against whoever places it. Important for context: the delisting concerns the futures contract, not the coin. What that means in detail is set out further down. Perpetual Futures Explained: What Sets a Perp Apart From a Classic Future A perpetual future, perp for short, is a futures contract without an expiry date, used to bet on the price of an underlying without owning that underlying. A classic future expires on a fixed day and is settled then. A perp runs on indefinitely as a matter of principle. So that the price of a perpetually running contract does not drift away from the spot market, there is the funding rate. The funding rate is a periodic payment between the long and short sides that pulls the contract price towards the index price. If the perp sits above the index, long positions pay short positions, and the other way round. The index price in turn is a reference price for the underlying composed from several trading venues.