Coinbase Global, Inc
Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States in terms of trading volume.[4] The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam.[1] In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California, headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.[5][6][7]
Coinbase Global, Inc.
Company type
Public company
Traded as
- Nasdaq: COIN (Class A)
- Russell 1000 component
Industry
Cryptocurrency
Founded
June 2012; 11 years ago in San Francisco, California, U.S.[1]
Founders
Headquarters
No physical offices[a]
Area served
100+ countries
Key people
Products
Revenue
US$3.19 billion (2022)
Operating income US$−2.7 billion (2022)
Net income US$−2.6 billion (2022)
Total assets
US$89.7 billion (2022)
Total equity US$5.45 billion (2022)
Owner
Brian Armstrong (19%)
Number of employees
4,510 (2022)
Website
Official website 
Footnotes / references
- ^ Legal address at Corporation Trust Center
[2][3]
Although cryptocurrencies can assure anonymous trade in principle, Coinbase trades are not anonymous: registered users are required to provide their taxpayer identification, and the transactions are reported to the IRS.[8][9] Also, although Coinbase offers more than 250 different cryptocurrencies to U.S. customers in 2023, it does not trade Monero and other cryptocurrencies with enhanced anonymity protection due to KYC requirements in accordance with anti-money laundering regulations.[10][11]
On February 23, 2018, Coinbase told approximately 13,000 affected customers that the company would be providing their taxpayer ID, name, birth date, address, and historical transaction records from 2013 to 2015 to the IRS within 21 days. In March, Coinbase appointed Emilie Choi, a former LinkedIn executive, as Vice President of Corporate and Business Development.[44] She was promoted to the role of president and chief operating officer in May 2019.[45] On March 26, 2018, Coinbase announced their intention to add support for ERC-20 tokens.[46] On April 5, 2018, Coinbase announced that it had formed an early-stage venture fund, Coinbase Ventures, focusing on investment into blockchain- and cryptocurrency-related companies.[47][48] On May 16, Coinbase Ventures announced its first investment in Compound Labs, a start-up building Ethereum smart contracts similar to money markets.[49] On May 23, GDAX was rebranded as Coinbase Pro.[50] Also in May, Coinbase launched Prime, a platform dedicated to institutional customers.[51] In August, Amazon cloud executive Tim Wagner joined Coinbase as vice president of engineering.[52] In September, Coinbase, along with Circle and Bitcoin miner company Bitmain, was part of a consortium called Centre that launched a digital coin called USD Coin, pegged to the U.S. dollar.[53][54]
In January 2019, Coinbase stopped all trading on Ethereum Classic due to a suspicion of an attack on the network.[55] In February, Coinbase announced that it had acquired "blockchain intelligence platform" Neutrino, an Italy-based startup, for an undisclosed price.[56] The acquisition raised concern among some Coinbase users[57] based on Neutrino founders' connection to the Hacking Team, which has been accused of providing internet surveillance technology to governments with poor human rights records.[58] On March 4, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his company "did not properly evaluate" the deal from a due diligence perspective and thus any Neutrino staff who previously worked at Hacking Team "will transition out of Coinbase."[59] In April, a U.K. corporate filing stated that Coinbase's non-U.S. revenue grew 20 percent to €153 million (US$173 million) in 2018 resulting in a net profit of €6.6 million.[60] Coinbase U.K. CEO Zeeshan Feroz said the company's non-U.S. operations accounted for nearly one-third of the company's overall revenue and Reuters estimated that the company's global revenue totalled "around $520 million" in 2018.[61] In August, Coinbase announced that it was targeted by a hacking attack attempt in mid-June. This reported attack used spear-phishing and social engineering tactics (including sending fake e-mails from compromised email accounts and creating a landing page at the University of Cambridge) and two Firefox browser zero-day vulnerabilities. One of the Firefox vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to escalate privileges from JavaScript on a browser page (CVE-2019–11707) and the other, could allow the attacker to escape the browser sandbox and execute code on the host computer (CVE-2019–11708). Coinbase's security team detected and blocked the attack, the network was not compromised, and no cryptocurrency was stolen.[62][63][64]
2020–2021: remote-first model and IPO
In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company announced it was shifting completely to remote work and would no longer recognize a formal headquarters.[5] Also in May, the company announced the acquisition of New York-based digital asset trading firm Tagomi for a price between US$75 and $100 million.[4] In June, Coinbase received internal backlash after CEO Brian Armstrong initially refused to make a statement about Black Lives Matter, citing the company's apolitical culture, but Armstrong later reversed his course on Twitter.[65] In September, Armstrong published a blog post emphasizing that Coinbase would not engage in social activism, citing that such activism had hurt other technology firms such as Google and Facebook, and offered a severance package for those who disagreed with this direction.[65][66] The company also faced complaints by employees saying they were treated unfairly due to their race or gender.[67]
In October, Coinbase announced the launch of a Visa debit card program.[68] In December, The New York Times reported that based upon data up to 2018 (already two years old as of the date of publication) women at Coinbase were paid an average of eight percent less than men at comparable jobs and ranks within the company, and Black employees were paid seven percent less than those in similar roles.[69][70]
In March 2021, the company fell under review by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, with concerns that the company may have provided their blockchain service to blacklisted individuals or companies, noting that the nature of blockchain technology makes it "technically infeasible" to prevent specific users from making transactions.[71][72]
Later, In March 2021, the company agreed to pay US$6.5 million to settle regulatory claims that it had reported misleading information about its trading volumes.[73][74] Also in March, Coinbase announced that it was establishing a business presence in India and hiring employees for IT services, including engineering, software development and customer support operations. The company also announced plans to open a physical office in Hyderabad.[75][76]
In April 2021, with its final earnings release before its April 14 direct listing, the company reported a nine-fold increase in first-quarter revenue, to US$1.8 billion, up from US$190.6 million the previous year. The jump was attributed to the increase in the price of Bitcoin over that period.[77]
On April 14, 2021, Coinbase became a public company on the Nasdaq exchange via a direct stock listing.[78][33][79] Before the listing, Nasdaq set a reference price of US$250 a share, giving the company an estimated value of US$47 billion.[80] At the end of its first day of trading, Coinbase closed at US$328.28 per share.[81]
In May, the company's chief people officer published a blog post announcing that Coinbase was eliminating salary and equity negotiations during recruiting, citing salary disparities with women and minorities. The announcement said that "all employees in the same position, in the same location, receive the same salary and equity offer."[82]
In June, Coinbase added Dogecoin to its tradable assets for Coinbase Pro users.[83][84] In September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly threatened to sue Coinbase if the company decided to launch a cryptocurrency lending product called Lend.[85] The company initially responded in a blog post that it was confused for being singled out by the SEC, but later announced it had cancelled the planned launch. Technology publication TechCrunch covered the story and noted the existence of similar cryptocurrency lending products already on the market.[86]
![[ℕ𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣] 𝕊𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝔹𝕚𝕥𝕔𝕠𝕚𝕟 - Did This Poor Baby Make A Profit On The BTC He Sold?](https://cdn.bulbapp.io/frontend/images/255151e6-9e83-4151-9644-80af06e53b74/1)
