One week before trading on NASDAQ, Coinbase released first-quarter provisional data showing a sharp jump in its customers as well as revenue.
Trading volume increased by 300%, revenue reached about $1.8 billion and more than 11% of all digital assets are stored on its platform.
The data for the first quarter published on Monday by the largest US cryptocurrency exchange show a significant increase in all sectors separately compared to the performance of previous quarters.
Let’s start with the monthly users who made at least one transaction; the increase is about 117% compared to the last quarter of 2020. At that time the total number of Coinbase users was 2.8 million, while in the first quarter of 2021, it reached $6.1 million!
This surge in users has led to a huge increase in revenue which has literally skyrocketed. To compare, in the first quarter of 2020, revenue was about $190 million, thus having an increase of 1000%! According to provisional estimates for the first quarter of the year, net profits will be between 730 million and 800 million dollars.
The company attributes to a large extent these huge leaps, in the continuing upward cycle of the cryptocurrency market which attracted in addition to institutional and corporate investors.
Perhaps the most important element revealed is the amount of digital assets held by Coinbase, which as of March 31st was worth $223 billion. The total market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies is close to $2 trillion, so we see that 11% of them “exist” in Coinbase.
The company estimates that about $122 billion is data on the platform owned by institutional investors. Coinbase is highly regarded by institutional and large corporate investors seeking exposure to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. So, the company took advantage of the large increase in interest of this portion of investors.
“We expect a significant growth in 2021 from trading and custody revenue given the growing interest in digital assets by investment institutions.”
