Coinbase Lists The UK's First FCA-Registered Stablecoin

The British pound has a stablecoin on Coinbase now. On April 22, the exchange listed tGBP, a GBP-backed digital asset issued by BCP Technologies and the first of its kind to carry FCA registration, making it available to users globally.

Worth noting, over roughly six months, Coinbase has quietly assembled a broader UK financial services stack, adding crypto-backed lending, decentralised exchange trading, and savings accounts alongside Wednesday's announcement.

What Is tGBP And How Does It Work?

tGBP is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the British pound. That means one tGBP is always designed to equal one GBP, held on-chain without exposure to foreign exchange swings. BCP Technologies, its issuer, is registered with the FCA and has taken part in the regulator's sandbox programme, which is a controlled testing environment for financial innovation before full-scale deployment.

For UK users who have historically had to route through dollar-pegged stablecoins like USDC or USDT, tGBP removes a layer of friction. Every time a user converted between GBP and a USD stablecoin, they absorbed FX risk and conversion costs. A pound-denominated stablecoin sidesteps that entirely.

Why Dollar-Pegged Stablecoins Create Problems For UK Users

Most stablecoin activity globally runs through USDT and USDC, both pegged to the US dollar. For UK residents, this creates a recurring issue: any on-chain transaction effectively involves an implicit currency conversion. The dollar-pound exchange rate fluctuates daily, meaning the real value of holdings can shift even when the stablecoin itself holds its peg perfectly.

tGBP is built to eliminate that specific problem for users operating in sterling.

How Does tGBP Fit Into The Bigger Stablecoin Picture?

The global stablecoin market has crossed $300 billion in aggregate market capitalisation. In 2025 alone, stablecoins settled over $30 trillion in transactions, a figure that holds largely independent of broader crypto price movements.

Coinbase projects the market could grow toward $2 trillion, citing demand from both retail users and institutional participants looking for programmable, borderless settlement infrastructure.

The UK listing arrives days after the FCA outlined the scope and timeline for the country's incoming crypto regulatory framework, which is expected to be fully implemented by 2027. Coinbase used the tGBP announcement to make its position on UK stablecoin policy explicit, calling on regulators to:

• Avoid punitive reserve requirements, specifically opposing a proposal that would require systemic stablecoin issuers to hold 40% of reserves in unremunerated central bank cash
• Permit rewards on stablecoin holdings to keep them competitive with other forms of digital money
• Reject issuance caps, which the exchange describes as effectively a cap on innovation
• Allow stablecoins to function as settlement assets in tokenised wholesale markets outside of sandbox conditions

What Else Has Coinbase Launched In The UK Recently?

Two days before the tGBP listing, Coinbase launched crypto-backed lending for UK users. The product allows borrowing of USDC against Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cbETH collateral, with processing in under a minute. It runs on Morpho, an open-source lending protocol built on Base, Coinbase's own layer-2 network built on Ethereum.

UK users can borrow up to $5 million in USDC depending on the value of collateral pledged. The product originally launched in the United States in January 2025 and has since generated more than $2.17 billion in total loan originations through Morpho as of mid-April 2026.

Resources

1. Blog article by Coinbase: GBP Stablecoins are Unlocking the Future of Finance: tGBP now on Coinbase

2. Announcement by Coinbase: UK Users Can Now Borrow USDC Against their Crypto Holdings 

3. Report by CoinDesk: Stablecoin Market Could Grow to $2T by End-2028: Standard Chartered