Coinbase Reports Sharp Revenue, User Growth in Q4

The crypto exchange’s trading volume hit $547 billion, a nearly 70% quarter-over-quarter increase

article-image

Blockworks exclusive art by axel rangel

share

key takeaways

  • Coinbase’s monthly transacting users quadrupled in 2021 to 11.4 million
  • Crypto assets beyond bitcoin and ether contributed to 55% of Coinbase’s total trading volume in 2021

Coinbase’s revenue, trading volumes, monthly transacting users and platform assets all rose in the final quarter of a year during which the company became the first publicly traded crypto exchange.

The company generated $2.5 billion of net revenue and $840 million of net income in the final three months of 2021, Coinbase reported on Thursday — about double the revenue and net income it notched during the third quarter.

Assets on the platform grew from $255 billion to $278 billion quarter-over-quarter. 

Coinbase ended the year with 11.4 million monthly transacting users, about a third of whom both invested and engaged with a non-investing product. Total verified users grew to 89 million.

Trading volume hit $547 billion in the fourth quarter, up about 67% from $327 billion in the prior quarter. Crypto assets beyond bitcoin and ether contributed 55% of the volume in 2021.

Bank of America changed Coinbase’s rating from neutral to buy in January, noting that it expects the company to increasingly diversify its revenue streams beyond retail crypto trading.

Staking, NFT and decentralized finance (DeFi) products will be among the offerings driving the diversification, Research Analyst Jason Kupferberg wrote at the time.

Coinbase revealed in October that it would launch an NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace allowing users to purchase, mint, showcase and discover the cryptoassets. 

The company is slated to discuss its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results at 5:30 p.m. ET.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Unlocked by Template (7).png

Research

Union’s improvements upon Tendermint consensus through CometBLS, coupled with ZK proving through Galois, allow for a broadly scalable, cost efficient, and low latency IBC implementation that is feasibly scalable across every existing blockchain, virtual machine and runtime. The implementation offers modular crosschain interoperability without the need for trusted intermediaries.  

article-image

The drop gives buyers Adidas outfits for their in-game characters, but the game hasn’t fully released yet

article-image

In 1999, Daniel Bernstein fought for code to be protected, just like free speech

article-image

Sentora aims to create an ecosystem focused on institutional investors’ DeFi needs

article-image

Using Bitcoin as a model, Vitalik’s new priority for Ethereum is technical simplicity

article-image

Solana leaders privately told validators to upgrade their software