The US Crypto Exchange

Over the past decade, digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum have been by far the best-performing financial assets

Over the past decade, digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum have been by far the best-performing financial assets. Their adoption by an increasingly large segment of the public and financial institutions was built on cryptocurrency exchange platforms, working as central nodes for buying and selling crypto.

Among these exchanges, the largest based in the US is Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), an early mover in this segment, founded in 2012. The company has been publicly traded since 2021.

As crypto becomes mainstream, the acceptance by regulatory authorities is changing as well. Most notably, the Trump administration announced the creation of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, which will hold other crypto as well.

This could be positive for Coinbase, as it also looks to revive an effort for tokenized securities in the US market.

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Coinbase Overview

Coinbase By Numbers

Coinbase is a cornerstone of the crypto ecosystem: a total of 245,000 ecosystem partners interact regularly with Coinbase, with $439B in quarterly trading volume, and $404B in assets on the platform.

It is present in 100+ countries and employs 3,700+ people.

In 2025, Coinbase had 8 million active accounts and was the world's largest custodian of Bitcoins, holding 2.4 million BTC. This represents no less than 12% of the entire supply of Bitcoin.

You can read more from us about the pros and cons of Coinbase as a crypto exchange in "Coinbase Review – Is it Really the Best Platform? (March 2025)."

Coinbase History

Coinbase was founded by ex-Deloitte consulting and ex-Airbnb engineer Brian Armstrong, a graduate of the William Marsh Rice University in Texas, with degrees in economics and computer science. He is still today the company's CEO.

He founded Coinbase in part after seeing firsthand the difficulties of sending international payments when working at Airbnb. In the whitepaper for Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto, he looked to develop a way to buy and store cryptocurrency as a side project.

A year later, an ex-Goldman Sachs trader, Fred Ehrsam, also joined the company as a co-founder. Ehrsam would later also create the venture investment firm Paradigm, which specializes in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

By 2014, Coinbase had already grown to 1 million users and was starting to help companies like Dell Technologies Inc (NYSE:DELL) - Get Free Report, Expedia Group Inc (NASDAQ:EXPE) - Get Free Report, or Time Inc. to accept Bitcoin payments.

Coinbase started its international expansion in 2015, in Canada and Singapore. By 2017, Coinbase was the first unicorn ($1B+ valuation) company in the crypto space.

In 2018, it started to offer 'Prime' – platform dedicated to institutional customers as interest in Bitcoin among financial institutions grew.

In 2021, Coinbase started to trade on the Nasdaq through a direct stock listing (DPO)

Coinbase Mission & Business

Coinbase sees itself as "on a mission to increase economic freedom for more than 1 billion people".

"We’re updating the century-old financial system by providing a trusted platform that makes it easy for people and institutions to engage with crypto assets, including trading, stacking, safekeeping, spending, and fast, free global transfers."

Besides Coinbase, the main app and crypto exchange, the company has a series of complementary offerings:

Coinbase is a key partner for many Bitcoin ETFs for which it holds custody of the Bitcoins, making it an important actor in the industry for these products, making ETF ownership easier for individual and institutional investors.

Coinbase has no physical headquarters and works as a 'remote only' company.

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Coinbase Financials

Coinbase generated $6.6B in revenue in 2024, with a net income of $2.6B and $3.3B in EBITDA. This was linked to a record-breaking Q4 2024, with $1.3B in net income.

In large part, Coinbase's (NASDAQ:COIN) net income can be attributed to the $2.3B of subscription and service revenues.

As such, Coinbase is best understood as a company similar to a stock exchange, making money from providing services to traders and investors, more than a 'Bitcoin company' whose profit would depend on the value of the asset itself. Of course, it is clear that like stock exchanges, periods of intense trading activity and speculation in a given sector tend to benefit exchanges like Coinbase.

Coinbase USDC

In September 2018, Circle, together with Coinbase