Bulletins

Coinbase sees huge increase in crypto trading

The company's quarterly trading volume rose to $335 billion in the first quarter of 2021 from $89 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong

Coinbase reported strong earnings in its first quarterly report as a public company.

Photo: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Coinbase saw a spike in revenue and trading volume in the first quarter as interest in bitcoin jumped.

Though Elon Musk's about-face on bitcoin caused cryptocurrency prices to crash this week, bitcoin's price doubled from $29,333.61 to $58,734.48 over the course of the first three months of the year, according to CoinDesk.

The cryptocurrency company had total revenue of $1.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, with net income of $771 million and adjusted EBITDA of $1.117 billion. The company previously said it expected net income of $730 million to $800 million.

Institutional trading volume continued to be strong, with $215 billion in institutional trading volume in Q1 compared to $120 billion in retail volume. That's up from $57 billion in institutional volume in Q4 2020 and $32 billion in retail volume in Q4 2020.

Tomio Geron

Tomio Geron ( @tomiogeron) is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups. He was also as a staff writer at Forbes covering social media and venture capital, and edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He can be reached at tgeron@protocol.com or tgeron@protonmail.com.

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