Coinbase

Coinbase was incorporated in May 2012 as Coinbase, Inc., a Delaware corporation, starting from the idea that anyone, anywhere should be able to easily and securely send and receive bitcoin. Co-founder Brian Armstrong has served as chief executive officer and a director since its inception, having previously been a software engineer at Airbnb; co-founder Fred Ehrsam, formerly a foreign exchange trader at Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry, was Coinbase’s president from November 2012 to January 2017, has been a director since March 2013, and in June 2018 co-founded the crypto investment firm Paradigm.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

In January 2014, Coinbase Global, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware as the holding company of Coinbase, Inc. and its other subsidiaries; a reorganization completed that April made Coinbase, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary.⁠[1]

A Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) settlement order of March 19, 2021 found that from January 2015 to September 2018 Coinbase recklessly delivered false, misleading, or inaccurate transaction reports on its GDAX electronic trading platform, because two of its own automated trading programs, Hedger and Replicator, at times matched with each other, and that the data were used by pricing services such as the CME Bitcoin Real Time Index; it also found that a former employee placed wash trades in the Litecoin/Bitcoin pair between August and September 2016, for which Coinbase was vicariously liable as principal. Coinbase was ordered to pay a $6.5 million civil penalty and to cease and desist from violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2]

In 2018, Coinbase partnered with Circle Internet Financial to launch the dollar stablecoin USDC, aiming to drive global mainstream adoption of stablecoins. USDC is issued by Circle and its affiliate and is redeemable one-to-one for U.S. dollars; under its agreement with Circle, Coinbase shares in reserve income according to the amount of USDC in circulation and its share on Coinbase’s platform.⁠[3][3][3]

In May 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Coinbase became a remote-first company, with most roles able to work remotely. As of its fiscal 2025 annual report, it still said it has no headquarters because it is remote-first, listing a New York address in filings only to satisfy regulatory requirements. Through December 31, 2020, its venture arm Coinbase Ventures had invested in more than 100 companies, and its platform served about 43 million retail users, 7,000 institutions, and 115,000 ecosystem partners in more than 100 countries.⁠[1][3][1][1]

On April 14, 2021, Coinbase Global’s Class A common stock began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker COIN through a direct listing, with no underwritten sale of new shares; anyone with a brokerage account could place orders in the opening order book, and Goldman Sachs served as designated financial advisor. The stock closed that day at $328.28 per share. The company has a dual-class structure, with unlisted Class B shares carrying 20 votes each.⁠[1][4][4][1][5][4]

In fiscal 2021, Coinbase reported total revenue of about $7.839 billion and net income of about $3.624 billion, with 89 million verified users and $278 billion in assets on platform at year-end.⁠[4][4][4][4]

In October 2021, plaintiffs filed the Underwood class action against Coinbase Global in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, later adding Coinbase, Inc. and Brian Armstrong as defendants, claiming that some crypto assets on the platform were securities and that Coinbase violated federal securities laws and state law. The district court dismissed all federal claims on February 1, 2023; on April 5, 2024, the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the Exchange Act claims but reversed as to the Securities Act and state-law claims. On July 30, 2026, the district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on claims covering the majority of transactions at issue, with the rest proceeding to further discovery; Coinbase said it would vigorously defend the remaining claims.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][6][6]

On June 14, 2022, Coinbase announced a restructuring in response to market conditions, cutting about 1,100 jobs, about 18% of its global workforce, leaving about 5,000 employees; on January 10, 2023, it announced a further cut of about 950 jobs. Total revenue for fiscal 2022 fell to about $3.194 billion, with a net loss of about $2.625 billion.⁠[7][8][9][9]

In January 2023, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) announced a consent order over historical shortcomings in Coinbase, Inc.’s compliance program. Coinbase, Inc. paid a $50 million penalty that month and committed to invest an additional $50 million in its compliance function by the end of 2024. Coinbase holds a BitLicense from NYDFS, and its custody subsidiary Coinbase Custody Trust Company is a limited purpose trust company chartered by NYDFS.⁠[9][3][1]

In June 2023, securities regulators in ten states, Alabama, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, issued notices, show-cause orders, or cease-and-desist letters to Coinbase or brought legal actions, alleging that the staking services provided by Coinbase, Inc. violated state securities laws. In July 2023, Coinbase reached agreements with California, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Wisconsin under which customers in those states could no longer stake new funds pending final adjudication, and it reached a similar agreement with Maryland in October. In March and April 2025, Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois, South Carolina, and Vermont dismissed or withdrew their actions. Coinbase disputes the claims of the remaining states.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

On June 6, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Coinbase, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that it operated its trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency and that its staking-as-a-service program was an unregistered securities offering; holding company Coinbase Global was named as a control person. Then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler said Coinbase had commingled exchange, broker-dealer, and clearinghouse functions that are separate elsewhere in the securities markets. The SEC sought injunctions, disgorgement, and penalties.⁠[10][10][10][10]

On August 9, 2023, Base, the Ethereum layer-2 blockchain developed by Coinbase, opened its mainnet to the public. Base had run a testnet from late February and opened only to developers from mid-July; it was led by Jesse PollakJesse PollakJesse Pollak is the creator and head of Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase; in August 2023 he announced that the Base mainnet was open to everyone. In October 2026, during the TOKEN2049 Singapore conference, he said the next tokenization “supercycle” would be led by tokenized stocks and non-dollar stablecoins.Open the full entry, Coinbase’s head of protocols. Fraudulent tokens were traded on Base the same month. Base is an open-source, permissionless protocol, and Coinbase earns revenue from the sequencer fees paid on each transaction on the chain.⁠[11][12][12][13][13][3]

On March 27, 2024, the district court partly denied Coinbase’s motion for judgment on the pleadings: the Exchange Act claims over its trading platform and Prime services and the Securities Act claims over staking went forward, while Coinbase won on the claims concerning its Wallet application. On January 7, 2025, the court certified the ruling for interlocutory appeal and stayed the case. On February 21, 2025, Coinbase announced an agreement in principle with SEC staff to jointly dismiss the case with prejudice.⁠[14][14][14][14]

On February 27, 2025, the SEC announced it had filed a joint stipulation with Coinbase to dismiss the case, citing the work of its newly formed Crypto Task Force on a regulatory framework; the SEC said the dismissal reflected a policy judgment rather than any assessment of the merits and did not reflect its position on other cases. Coinbase’s annual report states that the parties stipulated to dismissal with prejudice on February 28, 2025, concluding the case.⁠[15][15][15][3]

On May 11, 2025, Coinbase, Inc. received an extortion email from an unknown threat actor claiming to hold information on certain customer accounts and internal documents. Coinbase concluded that the attacker had paid multiple contractors or employees in support roles outside the United States to collect data from internal systems, including names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, some government ID images, and account balances, but no passwords or private keys were compromised and the personnel involved could not access customer funds. Coinbase refused to pay, cooperated with law enforcement, and pledged to voluntarily reimburse eligible retail customers who had been tricked into sending funds, initially estimating costs at $180 million to $400 million; it paid $311.2 million in cash related to the incident during 2025.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16][3]

On May 19, 2025, Coinbase Global was added to the S&P 500 index.⁠[3]

On May 8, 2025, Coinbase signed a share purchase agreement with the shareholders of Sentillia B.V., the Netherlands-registered holding company of crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, agreeing to pay $700 million in cash and issue 10,997,881 Class A shares. The deal closed on August 14, 2025, for total consideration of about $4.295 billion at the acquisition-date share price, about $721 million in cash and about $3.573 billion in stock, including $150 million in cash held in a 15-month indemnity escrow. Coinbase describes Deribit as the global leader in crypto options trading by volume and open interest and says the deal advances its international expansion and derivatives business.⁠[17][17][3][3][3][3]

On October 8, 2025, Coinbase acquired all equity of Gm Echo Ltd (Echo), an onchain capital-raising platform, for total consideration of $176 million, $68 million in cash and $108 million in Class A common stock.⁠[6][6]

In December 2025, Coinbase set out to become the “Everything Exchange,” expanding the assets tradable on its platform to stocks, commodity futures, perpetual futures, and prediction markets. On December 15, 2025, Coinbase Global reincorporated from Delaware to Texas, saying the change did not affect its business, management, employees, or assets and liabilities.⁠[3][18][18]

In fiscal 2025 (ended December 31, 2025), Coinbase reported total revenue of about $7.181 billion (about $6.564 billion in 2024), net income of about $1.260 billion (about $2.579 billion in 2024), and adjusted EBITDA of about $2.808 billion; it averaged 9.2 million monthly transacting users, held $376 billion in assets on platform at year-end, and recorded $1.221 trillion in spot trading volume for the year. It had 4,951 employees as of December 31, 2025.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

In January 2026, the board raised the share repurchase authorization from $2 billion to $4 billion; from January 1 to February 10, 2026, the company repurchased 5,188,656 Class A shares for $954.7 million.⁠[3][3]

On April 7, 2026, director Paul Clement said he would not stand for re-election at the annual meeting; the June 16 annual meeting elected nine directors: Brian Armstrong, Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry, Christa Davies, Fred Ehrsam, Kelly Kramer, Chris Lehane, Tobias LütkeTobias LütkeTobias Lütke, who also goes by Tobi Lütke, is a programmer, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, and a startup investor. He took part in the Ruby on Rails open-source community, has served as Shopify’s CEO since April 2008, and joined the board of Coinbase in 2022.Open the full entry, Gokul RajaramGokul RajaramGokul Rajaram is a Silicon Valley product leader and investor who helped build Google AdSense early in his career, went on to serve as an executive at Facebook, Square (Block), and DoorDash, and sits on the boards of public companies including Coinbase and Pinterest; in 2024 he co-founded the investment firm Marathon Management Partners with a partner.Open the full entry, and Fred WilsonFred WilsonFred Wilson is an American venture capitalist, co-founder and partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), and earlier co-founder, with Jerry Colonna, of the internet investment firm Flatiron Partners. He has written the blog AVC since 2003, chaired Etsy’s board for many years, and is a director of Coinbase.Open the full entry. On July 8, chief legal officer Paul Grewal announced he would step down on July 31, with Molly Abraham, vice president of legal, expected to become general counsel; on July 22, chief people officer Lawrence Brock announced he would step down on August 17; on September 1, the board expanded to ten members and appointed Anthony Armstrong as a director; and on September 29, chief accounting officer Jennifer Jones notified the company of her decision to retire.⁠[19][5][20][20][21][22][23]

On May 5, 2026, Coinbase announced a restructuring plan to respond to market conditions and “optimize the Company’s operations for the AI era,” cutting about 700 jobs, about 14% of its global workforce as of May 1, 2026. The restructuring was substantially complete in the second quarter, when it recognized $52.4 million in restructuring expenses.⁠[24][24][6][6]

In the second quarter of 2026 (ended June 30), Coinbase reported total revenue of about $1.220 billion (about $1.497 billion a year earlier) and a net loss of about $359 million (net income of about $1.429 billion a year earlier), with a first-half net loss of about $754 million; it had 7.6 million monthly transacting users in the quarter and $245.9 billion in assets on platform at June 30 ($425.0 billion a year earlier), a decline driven mainly by lower prices of crypto assets such as bitcoin. Starting that quarter, the company no longer reports spot trading volume as a key metric, saying its business now spans multiple asset classes.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6]

On September 1, 2026, tokenized stocks issued by Coinbase for eligible non-U.S. users went live on Base. On September 30, Base’s third network upgrade, Cobalt, went live on mainnet, introducing “validity transactions” that let users submit conditional, time-bound transactions and enhancing B20, Base’s native token standard.⁠[25][26][27][26]

On October 8, 2026, Catalyst, a startup building AI trading agents for retail investors, announced a $30 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Coinbase, Jump TradingJump TradingJump Trading is a proprietary trading firm headquartered in Chicago. It was founded in 1999 by two former Chicago Mercantile Exchange pit traders, built its business on algorithmic and high-frequency trading, and trades equities, options, credit, commodities, futures, and digital assets. Since 2021 its crypto business has operated under the Jump Crypto brand and has worked on blockchain infrastructure projects including Wormhole, Pyth, and Firedancer; in December 2024 its subsidiary Tai Mo Shan settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over trading related to TerraUSD, paying about $123 million without admitting or denying the findings.Open the full entry, Peak XV PartnersPeak XV PartnersPeak XV Partners is a venture capital firm that grew out of Sequoia’s India and Southeast Asia business, investing across the seed, venture and growth stages in markets including India, Asia-Pacific and the United States. The firm began operating as Sequoia Capital India in 2006 and adopted its current name and became independent in 2023.Open the full entry, Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry, AntiFund, and Premji InvestPremji InvestPremji Invest is an investment firm established by Azim Premji in 2006, operating across private and public markets in India and the United States, with investment returns primarily supporting the philanthropic work of the Azim Premji Foundation. Its investment areas include technology, financial services, consumer, healthcare and industrials.Open the full entry.⁠[28][29][30]

As of its fiscal 2025 annual report, Coinbase is registered in the United States with FinCEN as a money services business, holds money transmitter licenses in the states that require them as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and holds a BitLicense from NYDFS and a virtual currency business license from Louisiana; abroad, its Luxembourg subsidiary holds a license under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) to offer custody and trading across the European Economic Area, it holds a major payment institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Deribit holds a conditional license from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

Coinbase: Official website: https://www.coinbase.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

Coinbase Investor Relations: Official website: https://investor.coinbase.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

Base: Official website: https://www.base.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]

X: Public account: https://x.com/coinbase (opens in a new window)⁠[3]