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Coinbase added support for tGBP on April 22, making the pound-backed stablecoin available globally for the first time on its platform, with users able to buy, sell, convert, and transfer the asset across both the Coinbase app and Coinbase Exchange.
The listing marks the first time the exchange has offered a GBP-denominated stablecoin, extending its strategy beyond its longstanding USDC partnership into non-dollar territory that most major platforms have been slow to develop.
We're bringing the UK onchain, and the British Pound to the world.
tGBP is now listed and available to use on Coinbase.
Our first listed GBP-backed stablecoin – ensuring the UK's position in the future of finance.
Find out more ↓ pic.twitter.com/soApIheaQS
— Coinbase UK 🛡️ (@coinbaseuk) April 22, 2026
tGBP is the first and only British pound-pegged stablecoin issued by an FCA-registered firm, maintaining a 1:1 peg and fully collateralized by fiat and short-term zero-coupon bonds issued by HM Treasury. BCP Technologies launched tGBP in June 2025, and the token made its first major centralized exchange debut on Kraken in November before Wednesday’s Coinbase listing.
The practical case for tGBP rests on a friction that has quietly taxed British crypto users for years. Because the vast majority of stablecoins in circulation are dollar-pegged, UK participants moving between fiat and crypto must first convert sterling into dollars before accessing stablecoin liquidity, then reverse that conversion on exit. A pound-pegged stablecoin removes that friction, letting users settle, transfer, and trade in a token that tracks GBP rather than converting through dollar pairs first.
The listing comes just days after Coinbase began letting UK customers borrow against their crypto, and months after the launch of interest-bearing savings accounts in the country, part of what appears to be a coordinated push to deepen its footprint across Britain’s retail and institutional crypto markets.
Coinbase described stablecoins as having their ‘iPhone moment,’ arguing they are no longer just a tool for crypto traders but are becoming central to the global payments system, with the stablecoin market cap reaching over $300 billion and some projections showing it becoming a $2 trillion asset class by 2028. In 2025 alone, stablecoins settled over $30 trillion in transactions, with usage largely uncorrelated to crypto price swings.
Not all data points in the same direction. Research from the Federal Reserve published earlier this month found that less than 1% of stablecoins are used for payments based on transaction volume, while close to half of all stablecoins are being used within crypto finance, including exchanges, lending protocols and related infrastructure.
The gap between settlement volume and real-world payment adoption remains a standing tension for the industry’s broader ambitions.
Alongside the listing, Coinbase argued against overly punitive prudential requirements and called for allowing stablecoins to be used as settlement assets in tokenized wholesale markets outside of the FCA sandbox, in a real world environment.
The exchange also pushed back against what it called a regulatory speed limit on stablecoin issuance, warning that caps on supply amount to a cap on innovation, and called for UK users to be permitted to earn rewards on stablecoin holdings.
The UK’s regulatory framework for stablecoins remains in development, with full implementation expected by late 2026. How aggressively the FCA moves to formalize oversight of GBP stablecoin issuers will determine whether tGBP builds the liquidity depth and DeFi integrations needed to challenge the dollar-denominated tokens that still define the market globally.
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