The largest US crypto exchange, how it actually makes money, and why its revenue swings with the market.
Coinbase was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, and listed directly on Nasdaq in April 2021 — the first major US crypto company to do so.
Its revenue splits in two, and the split matters. Transaction fees from trading are the headline, and they collapse in quiet markets because retail simply stops trading. Subscription and services — custody, staking, and notably the share of interest earned on USDC reserves — is smaller but far steadier, and management has spent years trying to grow it precisely because the trading half is unpredictable.
It behaves like a leveraged bet on crypto market activity, not on crypto prices as such: volume matters more than price level. Regulation is the other driver — Coinbase is the most compliant large US venue, which is a moat when rules tighten and a cost when they do not.
The tokenized version trades on Solana around the clock, not only during US market hours. MarketRadar supports it directly from your own wallet — no brokerage account, no identity documents, no minimum deposit, and the position settles on-chain to your address.