Riding Bitcoin Surge, Coinbase Active Users Grew by 117% in Q1 2021; Revenue Tops $1.8B

Cryptocurrency exchange COINBASE saw a whopping 117% quarter-over-quarter increase in monthly transacting users, the firm revealed Tuesday in its voluntary earnings report.

All those users helped Coinbase rake in $1.8 billion over the quarter, driving a net income of approximately $730 million to $800 million, according to a new filing the comes ahead of the company’s Nasdaq listing next week.

All the numbers point to a business riding high as interest in cryptocurrency tracks upward with the price of bitcoin, ether and other leading assets.

For example:

  • Active users on Coinbase jumped from 2.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 to 6.1 million in the first quarter of 2021.
  • Verified users – or the total number of people with Coinbase accounts – increased from 43 million at the end of 2020 to 56 million at the end of Q1 2021.
  • Trading volumes topped $335 billion.
  • Total assets on Coinbase's platform increased from $90 billion to $223 billion, nearly a 150% increase quarter-over-quarter.

Showing how solidly Coinbase has cemented itself at the center of the current bull run, some $122 billion of those assets were from institutions.

The exchange also gave three financial scenarios for the rest of 2021.

In a “high” performance scenario, Coinbase would average 7 million monthly users if the crypto market capitalization grows throughout the rest of the year. In a “mid” scenario, the exchange would average 5.5 million monthly users if the market capitalization is flat. In a “low” scenario, the exchange would average 4 million if the market turns into something like the 2018 bear market.

This story is developing and will be updated.