Coinbase Q3 earnings: profit up 66% on crypto gains, revenue down 35%

Coinbase Q3 earnings, reported on 29 October, split into two stories. Net income rose 66% to $719 million from $433 million a year earlier. Revenue fell 35% to $1.22 billion and barely moved from the second quarter. The gap between them is a $715 million pre-tax gain on crypto that Coinbase holds as an investment, almost the size of the whole profit.

Where the money came from

• Transaction revenue: $590.2 million, down 1% on the quarter and 44% on the year.
• Stablecoin revenue: $328 million, up 3% on the quarter, of which $21 million came from USDC in corporate balances.
• Subscription and services grew and now make up nearly half of net revenue.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $333 million, up 60% on the quarter.

Trading shrank. Spot volume fell 8% to $135 billion and derivatives volume 7% to about $986 billion, though Bernstein counts an 11% drop across the industry, so Coinbase gained share.

The fastest new line is prediction markets. Their annualised revenue passed $200 million, double the quarter before.

“Prediction markets have been one of the fastest-growing products in Coinbase history”

— Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO, 29 October 2026, as quoted by The Block · theblock.co

Chief financial officer Alesia Haas said these businesses make Coinbase "more diversified and resilient across market cycles." Bernstein kept its Outperform rating and $250 target; William Blair puts fair value near $240. The shares closed 1.07% lower at $160.59 on Thursday.

October so far

Coinbase reported about $165 million of transaction revenue through 25 October in its earnings deck and told investors not to extrapolate from it. It guided fourth-quarter subscription and services revenue to $550 to $630 million. The same evening Binance lost about $6.3 billion in the Binance hack, and Armstrong said Coinbase was blocking transfers to the attacker's wallets.

Our count

• Stablecoins brought 27% of revenue, 56 cents for every dollar of trading revenue. Samsung's wallet keeps its USDC reserves at Coinbase too.
• Prediction markets at $200 million a year are about $50 million a quarter, roughly 4% of revenue.
• October ran at $6.6 million of transaction revenue a day, against $6.4 million a day in the third quarter. Trading is running at the third-quarter pace.
• Derivatives volume was 7.3 times spot volume.

A year ago revenue was about $1.88 billion. Coinbase now earns less from trading and more from holding: interest on USDC reserves and the price of the crypto on its own balance sheet. If bitcoin falls in the fourth quarter, the line that lifted net income this quarter turns into a loss. Watch the stablecoin line and the investment gain in the next report alongside trading volume.

This material does not recommend buying or selling Coinbase shares. Results come from Coinbase's third-quarter shareholder materials and The Block's report; analyst views from Bernstein and William Blair.