Coinbase’s fourth-quarter revenue greater than quadrupled as the biggest US cryptocurrency trade benefited from a manic quarter that noticed bitcoin set a file earlier than dropping sharply.
For the fourth quarter, Coinbase had internet revenue of $840m, or $3.32 per diluted share, on internet income of $2.5bn, the corporate stated on 24 February, in contrast with earnings of $177m on internet income of $497 million a yr earlier.
Analysts had projected earnings of $1.94 a share on income of $1.97bn, in response to FactSet.
In after-hours buying and selling, shares of Coinbase had been down 3.7% at $172.86.
READ Meet six former bankers who quit for crypto: ‘My phone rings off the hook’
For 2021, the corporate reported internet revenue of $3.62bn on internet income of $7.36bn, up from internet revenue of $322m on $1.14bn in internet income in 2020.
The fourth quarter was a very unstable one for cryptocurrencies. The value of bitcoin rose from $43,800 to a file $68,991 by November, a achieve of 58%, pushing the worth of the complete crypto market to a file $3tn.
From there, nonetheless, bitcoin fell 33%, ending the quarter at $46,208.
READ Russia-Ukraine tensions are a test of crypto’s mainstream adoption
That value motion attracted a variety of consideration and introduced in lots of new customers, which helped Coinbase. Like all trade, it makes cash on trades, not the path of the trades.
Regardless of that volatility — or for sure high-risk merchants due to it — the crypto market noticed a surge of curiosity and buying and selling, and Coinbase’s report displays that. A key measure of its buyer base, month-to-month transacting customers, rose to 11.4 million within the fourth quarter from 2.8 million a yr earlier.
General, the trade has 89 million verified customers. Analysts had projected 78 million customers.
READ Why BlackRock and other ‘tradfi’ titans could struggle to win over crypto traders
Its buying and selling quantity for the quarter rose to $547bn from $89bn a yr in the past, and belongings on platform — how a lot cash clients are preserving in Coinbase accounts — rose to $278bn from $90bn.
Coinbase is probably the most outstanding of a bunch of publicly traded corporations, together with Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain, and MicroStrategy, that are both within the crypto business or centered on it. Due to that, their shares have a tendency to trace the worth of the broader crypto market.
Coinbase’s inventory closed at a file of $357.39 on 9 November, about the identical time bitcoin was hitting its file. It has been primarily downhill since then. After closing 24 February at $179.56, the inventory is down 50% from that file, and down 29% yr up to now.
Write to Paul Vigna at paul.vigna@wsj.com
This text was revealed by Dow Jones Newswires