Coinbase has earned more than $2 billion in transaction fee revenue since launching in 2012, according to CEO Brian Armstrong.
Speaking onstage at a Vanity Fair event, Armstrong said Coinbase has turned a profit the last three years – including during the 2018 bear market – and has earned more operating profit than venture capital raised to date, estimated at nearly $550 million in nine funding rounds, according to CrunchBase. The firm is currently valued at $8 billion.
“Most of these profits we’re plowing back into the business to create new products,” Armstrong told Vanity Fair. “I sort of think of us as the anti-unicorn unicorn… I want Coinbase to be a company of repeatable innovation.”
Commenting on the current regulatory environment, Armstrong said reactions against Facebook and other crypto innovations are puzzling: “I don’t really know why the reaction was so negative. I’d really like to see the U.S. embrace this area of innovation.”
Armstong added: “There are a lot of people who are unbanked in the world, who are underbanked… My hope is the U.S. embraces this kind of innovation, even if it comes from a company like Facebook that they’re not necessarily very happy with.”
The exchange has recently expanded its European ventures as well, procuring an Irish e-money license from the Central Bank of Ireland earlier this month. With the license, Coinbase is certified to offer money and banking services throughout the European Economic Area and EU.
Brian Armstrong at Consensus 2019 via CoinDesk archives