Coinbase has grossed more than $2 billion in transaction fee revenue since launching in 2012, according to CEO Brian Armstrong.
Come out onstage at a Vanity Fair event, Armstrong said Coinbase has turned a profit the last three years – containing during the 2018 bear market – and has earned more operating profit than venture capital raised to ancient, 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 move in reverse into the business to create new products,” Armstrong told Vanity Fair. “I sort of think of us as the anti-unicorn unicorn… I pine for Coinbase to be a company of repeatable innovation.”
Commenting on the current regulatory environment, Armstrong said reactions against Facebook and other crypto novelties 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 joined:
“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 group like Facebook that they’re not necessarily very happy with.”
The exchange has recently expanded its European put downs as well, procuring an Irish e-money license from the Central Bank of Ireland earlier this month. With the enable, Coinbase is certified to offer money and banking services throughout the European Economic Area and EU.
Brian Armstrong at Consensus 2019 via CoinDesk archives