Coinbase’s CEO projects confidence despite crypto crash

John Adams

Sat, February 14, 2026 at 3:53 AM GMT+9 4 min read

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**Key insights**: Coinbase's earnings declined as the broader bitcoin market fell sharply in recent months.

**What's at stake**: Investors are looking for signs that the cryptocurrency company can expand despite the market's volatility.

**Forward look**: Coinbase is adding more products to its exchange and expanding its partnerships with traditional financial institutions.

After bitcoin’s value dropped from about $125,000 in October to just about $60,000 earlier this month, Coinbase’s shareholder letter included the following nugget.

“Crypto is cyclical and experience tells us it’s never as good or as bad as it seems.”

While broadly that might be true, the most recent cryptocurrency correction has weighed heavily on Coinbase’s balance sheet, unsurprising given it holds 12% of the world’s cryptocurrency.

For the fourth quarter, Coinbase reported that it lost $666.7 million, and $2.49 per share – down sharply from a profit of $4.68 per share in the fourth quarter of 2024. FactSet analysts projected a $1 per share profit for fourth quarter 2025.

Under analyst questioning about the potential of a new “crypto winter,” during Thursday’s earnings call, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said “We don’t try to predict the future too much here … I will say that I kind of enjoy these periods sometimes when the market is down, ironically because it allows us to keep building.”

Coinbase by the numbers

Coinbase’s fourth-quarter revenue was $1.78 billion, down 21.6% from the prior year and below FactSet’s projection of $1.81 billion.

“We did have softer market conditions,” Alesia Haas, Coinbase’s chief financial officer, said during the earnings call, adding the company is still growing and marked the ninth consecutive quarter of “native inflows,” or inflows in which users “engage” with the company. “Those who are in the market, they are buying the dip,” Haas said.

For the first quarter of 2026, Coinbase projected subscription and services revenue to be in the range of $550 million to $630 million, reflecting the lower average crypto price environment.

“Coinbase delivered fourth quarter results short of expectations and guidance that proved uninspiring as unfavorable crypto market dynamics are taking hold,” KeyBanc Capital Markets said in a research note. “While there may be visible near-term upside from recent product launches such as prediction markets and equities, we think it’s tough for shares to work amid the current backdrop.”

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More than bitcoin

Armstrong contends the company’s diversification will help it through the difficult period.

The company’s monthly verified users – which it says is its key metric – has been stagnant. It stood at 11.2 million at the end of 2021, but was at 9.2 million at the end of 2025.

“We’ve been through these cycles many times at Coinbase. Adoption is continuing to grow, regulatory clarity is on the horizon and I’m more bullish than ever,” Armstrong said. “It’s been a volatile few weeks for crypto prices, but bitcoin remains the best performing asset class of the past decade.”

Coinbase’s diversification strategy, which it calls the Everything Exchange, is an attempt to create more active users and glean more revenue from beyond bitcoin trades.

Everything Exchange, which launched in the second quarter of 2024, features a single platform to trade crypto, equities, prediction markets and other products. “The ideal is to have access to every investment and trading product they want in one place.”

Coinbase has also ramped up its work with traditional financial firms. Coinbase and Standard Chartered in late December expanded an existing partnership to include new crypto-related services for institutional clients, such as custody, staking, trade execution and security. In another move, Klarna said it would raise short-term funding denominated in Coinbase’s USDC stablecoin.

Armstrong touted some of the strategy’s progress on Thursday. Since Everything Exchange’s launch, the company now has 12 products that are on pace to produce more than $100 million in annualized revenue, up from 8 in 2025, according to Coinbase.

“The Everything Exchange is nascent,” William Blair analysts said in a research note. “We think this list [or $100 million annual revenue products] will grow. Coinbase has competition, but given product growth, we argue Coinbase is in a better position during this crypto bear market compared with past cycles. We believe detractors’ contention that Coinbase is simply an overpriced consumer crypto exchange is increasingly vacuous.”

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