US cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase revealed amassing a revenue of $1.8 billion in just the first quarter of 2021. According to the preliminary report, the platform estimated to report net income somewhere close to $730 million and $800 million on revenue of $1.8 billion in contrast to a dwarf of just $190.6 million revenue from the same time last year.
In fact, the first quarter financial have surpassed for all of 2020 when the company earned $322 million on revenue of $1.3 billion. In short, Coinbase did more revenue in the first quarter of this year than in all of 2020. With this, the latest revenue surged by more than nine-fold from a year earlier. This news comes a week prior to the cryptocurrency exchange’s public listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker COIN.
In the second quarter of 2021, Coinbase expects nearly $35 million of one-time expenses related to its direct listing. The company revealed that it intends to “augment” historically strong organic growth with customer acquisition and engagement by meaningfully increasing its investment in sales and marketing.
What drove Coinbase’s earnings and revenues?
Coinbase’s fortunes are tied closely to the swings of the crypto market and hence the meteoric rise of Bitcoin to $60,000 is what led the first-quarter revenue to climb to a record high. While the world’s largest crypto-asset was up by more than 700% over the past year, Ethereum raked in gains of more than 1000% around the same time frame.
This, in turn, catapulted the collective market cap to hit an astonishing $2 trillion and this amplification of the manic rally is what hellped the exchange to profit handsomely.
Coinbase also said,
“We expect meaningful growth in 2021 driven by transaction and custody revenue given the increased institutional interest in the crypto asset class”
According to reports, the company said that it has 56 million verified users which is 4x more than Robinhood. Meanwhile, the monthly active users on the platform has increased to over 6 million, thanks to the bull market. The figure surged from 1.3 million in the first quarter.