Coinbase: Revenue Doubled in 2024 With Crypto ‘Now Going Mainstream’

With regulatory clarity on the horizon, cryptocurrency is “now going mainstream,” Coinbase Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said Thursday (Feb. 13).

Speaking during the company’s quarterly earnings call, Armstrong said Coinbase aims to be the platform that helps companies that are new to crypto begin to integrate it into their operations.

“We like to say that on-chain is the new online,” Armstrong said. “It’s a little bit like the early 2000s, when every company had to figure out how to adapt to the internet. Up to 10% of global GDP could be running on crypto rails by the end of this decade.”

Coinbase’s revenue more than doubled in 2024 to reach $6.6 billion, with gains in both its transaction revenue and its subscription and services revenue, according to a shareholder letter released Thursday in conjunction with the call.

Amid rising trading volume, the company’s transaction revenue for the year was 162% higher than it was in 2023, reaching about $4 billion. Total trading volume was up 148%, with consumer trading volume up 195% and institutional trading volume up 139%.

Coinbase attributed the increase in trading volume to higher levels of crypto asset volatility and higher average crypto asset prices, both of which were driven by the launch of bitcoin exchange-trade fund (ETF) products in the first quarter of 2024 and the election of a “pro-crypto” president and Congress in the fourth quarter.

The company’s subscription and services revenue grew 64% in 2024 and reached $2.3 billion. Most of this growth came from blockchain rewards revenue, stablecoin revenue and Coinbase One subscription revenue.

Coinbase said in its shareholder letter that the stablecoin revenue benefited from there being more participants in the ecosystem, deeper integration of the USDC stablecoin across its products and a 225% increase in on-chain USDC payments.

Looking ahead, the company expects to see quarter-over-quarter growth in the first quarter, with subscription and services revenue gains being driven by stablecoins, Coinbase One subscriptions and higher average crypto prices, per the shareholder letter.

“We really want to drive utility to get this next wave of mass adoption going for crypto,” Armstrong said during the call. “We think crypto is much, much more than just an asset class that people want to trade. There’s going to be daily use cases for everybody in the world as crypto updates the global financial system. And one of those big categories is payments.”