The U.S.’s most prominent crypto exchange is printing money again, making the recent Crypto Winter feel like a distant memory. On Thursday, Coinbase reported $1.3 billion in profits and $2.2 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter—a near-record performance reminiscent of its blowout performances in 2021. But Coinbase isn’t the same business it was three years ago. In 2021, more than 90% of its revenue came from retail and institutional investors trading on its platform. In 2024, that percentage shrank to about 60%.
“The business is diversifying. You’re seeing it already in results,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens JMP, told Fortune in an interview.
Still, Coinbase is a crypto company at its heart, and the recent resurgence in investor interest in digital assets has lifted the public company’s revenues.
“They live and die when crypto is high,” Dan Dolev, a senior analyst in fintech equity research at Mizuho Securities, told Fortune in an interview.
Here’s a closer look at how Coinbase made more than $2 billion to close out 2024.
Trading revenues
Coinbase’s retail trading business is its bread and butter. In the fourth quarter, it notched more than $1.3 billion in consumer trading fees, or the small percentage the company takes when a trader buys or sells, say, Bitcoin on its exchange. That’s about 60% of its fourth-quarter revenue.
The crypto exchange also saw the fees it gets for institutional trading almost triple from the prior quarter to more than $140 million in the fourth.
Brian Armstrong, cofounder and CEO of Coinbase, pointed to the growth of its institutional trading vertical in Thursday’s earnings call. “We are a multiproduct business,” he said.
Stablecoins and blockchain rewards
Coinbase also posted significant revenue from stablecoins and blockchain rewards.
The crypto exchange has a revenue-sharing agreement with Circle, the issuer of USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. Circle backs its stablecoins with U.S. Treasuries and pockets the interest it earns from holding U.S. debt. Coinbase reported that it had generated $225 million from its deal with Circle in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The crypto exchange also reported almost $215 million in revenue from “blockchain rewards.” This refers to the money Coinbase earns through staking, or when companies or individuals put crypto they own into escrow to secure a blockchain. In return for locking up their crypto, stakers receive interest.
In Coinbase’s case, that interest from staking represented almost 10% of its fourth-quarter returns.
‘Trump bump’ or regulatory sea change?
Traders, though, weren’t immediately impressed by Coinbase’s earnings. After markets opened on Friday, the crypto company’s stock slid about 4% to $276.
Dolev, the analyst at Mizuho Securities, wasn’t surprised. He noted that Coinbase reported about $750 million in revenue from trading from the beginning of 2025 to Feb. 11. If that trend continues, its quarter-over-quarter revenue from transactions will remain flat.
“People are really worried that this was a one-time Trump bump,” he said of Coinbase’s fourth-quarter results. “Anything that feeds into this fear is a neg[ative] on these stocks.”
Still, Ryan, the analyst at Citizens JMP, believes positive regulatory shifts in D.C. for crypto will be tailwinds for Coinbase in 2025. Donald Trump’s administration has promised long-awaited crypto legislation. The 47th president has also installed crypto boosters to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, two of the U.S.’s most important financial regulators.
“The trading volumes that people get so anxious about ebb and flow on a quarter-to-quarter basis,” Ryan said. “We are now on the cusp of [legal] clarity.”
