Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_6217f9831f089" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Coinbase’s monthly transacting users quadrupled in 2021 to 11.4 million</li>
 <li>Crypto assets beyond bitcoin and ether contributed to 55% of Coinbase’s total trading volume in 2021</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Coinbase’s revenue, trading volumes, monthly transacting users and platform assets all rose in the final quarter of a year during which the company became the first publicly traded crypto exchange.



The company generated $2.5 billion of net revenue and $840 million of net income in the final three months of 2021, Coinbase reported on Thursday — about double the revenue and net income it notched <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinbase-reports-q3-net-revenue-dropped-39-to-1-234b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">during the third quarter</a>.



Assets on the platform grew from $255 billion to $278 billion quarter-over-quarter.&nbsp;



Coinbase ended the year with 11.4 million monthly transacting users, about a third of whom both invested and engaged with a non-investing product. Total verified users grew to 89 million.



Trading volume hit $547 billion in the fourth quarter, up about 67% from $327 billion in the prior quarter. Crypto assets beyond bitcoin and ether contributed 55% of the volume in 2021.



Bank of America <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bank-of-america-coinbase-revenue-diversification-to-accelerate-in-2022-and-beyond/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">changed Coinbase’s rating</a> from neutral to buy in January, noting that it expects the company to increasingly diversify its revenue streams beyond retail crypto trading.



Staking, NFT and decentralized finance (DeFi) products will be among the offerings driving the diversification, Research Analyst Jason Kupferberg wrote at the time.



Coinbase <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinbase-plans-to-launch-nft-marketplace/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revealed in October</a> that it would launch an NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace allowing users to purchase, mint, showcase and discover the cryptoassets. 



The company is <a href="https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/3580726/C809D82E9F5E923AAD6E6A8A4756AC65" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">slated to discuss</a> its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results at 5:30 p.m. ET.



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Coinbase Reports Sharp Revenue, User Growth in Q4

Casey Wagner

<div id="highlights-block_62151df97e59a" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The company defended its fees, saying they’ll remain unchanged, as assets and revenues ballooned</li>
 <li>“Everyone is doing an ETP today — everyone wants to do one,” a CoinShares executive said</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Thanks to explosive demand for digital asset investment products, European cryptocurrency asset manager CoinShares <a href="https://coinshares.com/investor-relations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">notched</a> its highest quarterly earnings and assets under management Tuesday.



CoinShares <a href="https://coinshares.com/investor-relations/reports-portal/quarterly-reports#q1-2021-earnings" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a> a 1.6 billion pound, nearly $2.2 billion, year-over-year increase in ETP (exchange-traded product) assets under management between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2021. The asset manager’s total comprehensive income for 2021 was 114.3 million pounds, or $155.4 million, up from 18.6 million pounds in 2020.



“Due to the correlation with digital asset prices and the all-time highs that we&#8217;ve experienced over the year, our products have benefited significantly,” Richard Nash, CoinShares’ chief financial officer, said on Tuesday’s earnings call.&nbsp;



CoinShares’ ETPs generated 78.5 million pounds, or $106.7 million, in fees during the fourth quarter. The asset manager has already launched new ETPs this quarter, including the first such product with staking rewards built on the Tezos and Polkadot blockchains.



CoinShares is not the only asset manager profiting from the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/with-us-bitcoin-etf-in-limbo-crypto-exchange-traded-products-all-the-rage-in-europe/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">growing interest</a> in digital asset ETPs.



Fidelity International became <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/21-shares-expands-crypto-etps/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the latest</a> issuer to offer a European ETP earlier this month with the launch of its Fidelity Physical Bitcoin ETP (FBTC) on Germany’s Deutsche Börse Xetra — the cheapest such European ETP. 21Shares, the world’s largest crypto ETP issuer, launched <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/21-shares-expands-crypto-etps/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">three new decentralized finance (DeFi)</a> products in recent weeks.



Asked about competition, CoinShares executives acknowledged that the space is crowded.&nbsp;



“Everyone is doing an ETP today — everyone wants to do one,” Jean-Marie Mognetti, CoinShares’ CEO, said. “I&#8217;m cognizant of the competition, and I welcome it because it&#8217;s much easier for CoinShares to show how good we are at doing what we&#8217;re doing when there are more people than one.”



Growing competition will not impact CoinShares’ current fee structure, at least for now, Mognetti added.



“I don&#8217;t think we are in a position where we have to drop off fees. You are not buying CoinShares and just CoinShares’ products, you&#8217;re buying CoinShares for the brand name,” Mognetti said. “It’s an all-in price…you’re buying the expertise.”



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.