Coinbase’s $1.22 billion quarter misses estimates as crypto slump drags business yet again

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) exchange posted $1.2 billion in second-quarter revenue for the period ended June 30, below the $1.3 billion analysts expected in an LSEG (LSE: LSEG) survey. Its loss reached $1.36 per share, far worse than the 17-cent loss Wall Street had penciled in. The company’s stock was immediately sold off following this news, resulting in more than a 7% decline after hours.

The quarter was the company’s third straight miss on both sales and profit forecasts. Coinbase lost $359.5 million, compared with a $1.43 billion profit one year earlier. Earnings went from $5.14 per share last year to a $1.36 loss this time. Revenue also fell from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion.

Coinbase builds subscription products while weak trading keeps hurting revenue

Bitcoin spent much of the second quarter stuck inside a narrow price band, as the market was healthier than it had been during the first quarter, but spot bitcoin ETFs faced a long run of withdrawals.

Coinbase then saw reduced action in the two largest areas of its operations, as the company earned $599 million from transaction revenue and earned another $555 million through subscriptions and services.

All of these figures fell below estimates and were lower compared to the previous year. The share of subscriptions remained larger compared to the total amount of revenues. For a number of years now, Coinbase has been seeking to reduce its dependency on trading commissions.

Revenue from stablecoins totaled $292 million, a decrease of $17 million compared to the same quarter in 2025. The expectation from StreetAccount was for $327.2 million. The disappointment resulted from management’s continued emphasis on services such as USDC, Coinbase One, Base, and others outside spot trading.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Coinbase reached a new record for its share of crypto trading and argued that the company can operate through any market. In the earnings release, he said, “Coinbase is no longer a bet just on the price of bitcoin.” Brian added, “All of financial services are getting updated by crypto, whether that’s trading or payments or lending,” and called Coinbase the best-placed company to supply that infrastructure.

During the earnings call, Brian Jung of Jung Media asked why Coinbase appeared to be reconnecting with retail and crypto-native users after Brian appeared on Market Bubble and Cobie took control of the Base App.

Coinbase’s Brian said, “Yeah, so we have lots of different groups that like to use Coinbase, and build on top of the Base Chain is even probably a broader group. And so, you know, we try to make an effort to connect with all of them. It’s really a pretty diverse group of people that use Coinbase, right? There’s the largest, like, GSIB banks in the world are building on our infrastructure.”

Brian and Alesia detail how Coinbase plans to serve AI agents and grow USDC

Austin Hankwitz of Grit Capital asked whether AI agents would care about Coinbase’s reputation or simply choose the cheapest and fastest network. He noted that more than 90% of agent-driven stablecoin transaction volume settles on Base. Brian said price would matter, but not by itself. “AI agents are probably going to care about a similar set of things that humans would,” he said.

As Brian put it, Base provides settlements for less than a cent within less than a second. Additionally, Brian noted that automated clients will require other factors, such as security, liquidity, legality, reliability, and uptime. He compared that choice with selecting Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) AWS for cloud infrastructure. “Trust will continue to be important in that world,” he said, adding that Coinbase plans to welcome AI agents as customers.

Eric Pan of Ericnomics asked where Coinbase expects growth now that bitcoin-linked transaction revenue has fallen from more than half of company sales to 12%.

Brian said, “At any given time in trading, there’s always something that’s up and something that’s down. That’s part of the Everything Exchange strategy. You’ve got to have all the shelves stocked so you have the inventory when that thing trends that week. And then on the non-trading fee side with subscription and services, we’ve seen good growth of that over the past years as well.”

Coinbase wants enough products available so customers can trade whatever becomes popular at a given time. He said the wider menu should spread trading-fee income across more assets and products. Subscription and service fees, meanwhile, are meant to make company revenue easier to forecast.

Chief Financial Officer Alesia Haas said paid Coinbase One memberships reached a record during the quarter, even as crypto trading volume fell. “We saw an all-time high in paid Coinbase One subscribers this quarter,” she said. Alesia said those members tend to use more of the platform’s products, giving Coinbase another way to increase customer activity without depending only on trading.

Ken Worthing of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) asked whether Coinbase’s deal with Hyperliquid gives large USDC holders too much of the stablecoin’s economics.

Alesia said institutions can hold USDC on Coinbase and earn rewards, while retail users can do the same through Coinbase One. She said Hyperliquid was treated like any other customer, though its role in perpetual futures and market-making made the relationship important.

Alesia said Coinbase was willing to share revenue because placing USDC deeper inside Hyperliquid could increase liquidity, usage, and adoption across the wider network.

Brian said the company would keep funding that push. He said USDC already ranks first for stablecoin transaction volume and first among regulated stablecoins, but remains second to Tether by market value when less-regulated products are included.