Author: Nancy, PANews
Original Title: Advancing Coinbase: Large-Scale Sponsorship and Acquisitions Paving the Way, Leveraging S&P 500 to Enter Mainstream Circles
Coinbase is undoubtedly one of the key forces driving crypto compliance in the United States, promoting industry-friendly policies through an active political donation strategy, and recently high-profile sponsoring the 250th anniversary parade of the United States, attempting to strengthen its influence in mainstream society and the political arena.
Meanwhile, Coinbase has been continuously accelerating product innovation and ecosystem expansion in recent months, significantly optimizing user experience and boosting market confidence, and trying to build a more diversified growth engine.
S&P 500 Inclusion Drives Stock Price Recovery, Profitability Model Reveals Concerns
Since the beginning of this year, Coinbase has shown positive signals on multiple key indicators, with both stock price and user activity rebounding.
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In terms of stock performance, as of June 16, 2025, Coinbase (COIN) stock price has risen to $242.71, increasing by over 60% from the low point of $151.47 in April 2025. This rebound is partly due to COIN's official inclusion in the S&P 500 index in mid-May 2025. As the first crypto company to join the S&P 500 index, this marks an increased recognition in mainstream financial markets, undoubtedly providing solid support for its stock price. However, compared to the listing high of $342.98 in April 2021, its stock price is still down by about 29%.
According to Fintel data, 1,560 listed institutions have reported holding Coinbase stock, with a total of over 120 million shares. These include heavyweight investors such as Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Hana International Group, State Street Bank, Jane Street, and Paradigm.
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Partial COIN-holding listed companies
At the same time, Coinbase maintains a certain scale of user activity. Data from website traffic monitoring agency Similarweb shows that Coinbase had 34.7 million active users in May, ranking second in the industry, just behind the traditional brokerage and trading platform Robinhood.
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However, behind the eye-catching market performance, Coinbase's profit structure has significant concerns. The 2024 financial report shows that about $4 billion in revenue comes from transaction fees, accounting for approximately 63% of the total annual revenue (around $6.3 billion). This model, highly dependent on transaction fees, makes its revenue extremely sensitive to crypto market fluctuations and activity. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, Coinbase's trading revenue declined by 19% quarter-on-quarter to $1.3 billion, indicating significant market trading volume pressure. As the on-chain ecosystem rapidly develops, it is gradually diverting trading volume and user attention, intensifying competition for centralized exchanges.
Moreover, Coinbase has recently faced serious trust challenges. In May this year, Coinbase publicly disclosed a severe data breach affecting over 69,000 users, with potential losses reaching hundreds of millions of dollars, severely impacting user trust and brand image. Additionally, due to poor stock performance and information disclosure issues, Coinbase is facing a class-action lawsuit. The SEC is investigating whether Coinbase exaggerated user data during its direct listing in 2021, focusing on the authenticity of its so-called "100 million verified users" metric, which was quietly discontinued two years later. The data breach and litigation have also caused market panic, becoming one of the negative factors suppressing the stock price.
Multi-Dimensional Competition, Accelerating Product On-Chain and Global Strategic Expansion
Facing multiple market challenges, Coinbase is actively seeking diversified growth paths through product innovation and global strategic layout, aiming to reshape market competitive advantages.
On one hand, Coinbase is promoting deep expansion of products and service lines. For instance, in perpetual contracts, Coinbase announced this month that it will launch compliant perpetual contracts in the US domestic market, marking its official entry into the US crypto derivatives market and filling a long-standing strategic gap in domestic derivatives layout. Due to regulatory ambiguity and compliance costs, US investors have long been unable to directly use high-liquidity, high-leverage perpetual contracts, only trading through overseas platforms. However, as the regulatory environment gradually becomes clearer, the US crypto derivatives market is approaching a policy turning point. CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger recently publicly stated that crypto perpetual futures contracts may be compliant for trading within the US, releasing a positive signal to the market.
More strategically, shortly after announcing the launch of perpetual contracts, Coinbase announced an agreement to acquire Deribit for $2.9 billion. Deribit is one of the world's largest crypto options and perpetual contract platforms, with an extremely solid institutional client base and strong product depth. This acquisition not only sets a record for the largest merger in the crypto market but also significantly enhances Coinbase's voice in the crypto derivatives market.
In payment scenarios, Coinbase recently collaborated with Shopify and Stripe to promote USDC usage in e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, Coinbase continues to deepen its crypto credit card business. Following early cashback credit card trials, Coinbase recently announced the Coinbase One Card in partnership with American Express, planned for release to the US market in fall 2025. Cardholders will receive up to 4% Bitcoin cashback based on their platform asset size, currently the highest cashback rate in the crypto credit card market. In addition to Bitcoin cashback, cardholders can simultaneously enjoy additional benefits from American Express, including travel insurance, shopping protection, return protection, and Amex Offers time-limited promotions. Amex's mature payment network and brand reputation will also enhance the Coinbase One Card's acceptance and reliability.
The credit card is only open to Coinbase One subscription users, which can strengthen the closed-loop effect of Coinbase's platform membership system. Coinbase One members, after paying a monthly subscription fee, can enjoy a series of benefits including zero transaction fees, exclusive customer service channels, higher staking rewards, Base chain gas fee subsidies, significantly improving user stickiness. Since its launch in 2023, this subscription service has accumulated nearly 1 million users, becoming one of the most steadily growing business segments in the Coinbase ecosystem. In the first quarter of 2025, subscription and service revenue reached $698.1 million, growing 9% from the previous quarter, with a continuously increasing proportion of total revenue.
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Facing the increasingly converging trend of CEX and DEX, Coinbase is also focusing on the on-chain trading entry layer. Coinbase recently announced the integration of Base network DEX into its main application, enabling access to hundreds of thousands of on-chain assets. This move is similar to CEX on-chain competitive strategies like Binance Alpha. As a core promoter of Base, this action will not only greatly enhance the activity and liquidity of assets on Base, injecting stronger network effects, but also strengthen Coinbase's position in the on-chain trading entry dimension. Coinbase has also recently launched cbDOGE and cbXRP tokens on Base, which will enhance the competitiveness and liquidity of Base in Layer 2 networks.
For developers, Coinbase launched the CDP wallet in late May, a new wallet infrastructure combining account abstraction and custody entry. Users can completely control on-chain assets without managing private keys or relying on centralized custody.
Moreover, with the continuous rise in institutional investors' demand for Bitcoin, Coinbase's asset management company launched a new fund called Coinbase Bitcoin Yield Fund (CBYF) in May this year. The fund is designed for non-US institutional investors, aiming to help institutional clients generate stable on-chain returns while holding Bitcoin, with a target annual net return of 4%–8%, with returns denominated and distributed in Bitcoin. Aspen Digital, a digital asset management platform in Abu Dhabi, is one of the seed investors of CBYF and has been designated as the exclusive distribution partner for the fund in the UAE and Asian markets.
After gradually improving its product matrix, Coinbase is also accelerating its global layout through global compliance expansion and integration of political and economic resources. For instance, in terms of global compliance expansion, Coinbase is actively striving to become one of the first platforms to obtain a full European crypto business license under the MiCA regulation. It has also obtained a virtual currency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) in the United States; in terms of political and economic resources, Coinbase has been quite active. For example, David Plouffe, a former Obama campaign manager and senior Democratic strategist, recently joined Coinbase's global advisory board; meanwhile, Coinbase has also sponsored Trump's military parade, which has raised public relations risks and sparked public controversy.
Overall, with its first-mover advantage in compliance, support from political and economic resources, and market recognition from being included in the S&P 500, Coinbase has secured a place in the mainstream financial system. However, facing an increasingly complex and changing regulatory environment and intensifying market competition, whether Coinbase can effectively address policy risks, diversify its profit structure, and continue to win user trust will remain key challenges for its future development.
