RISK FACTORS SUMMARY
Consistent with the foregoing, our business is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those risks discussed at length below. These risks include, among others, the following, which we consider our most material risks:
• Our operating results have and will significantly fluctuate, including due to the highly volatile nature of crypto;
• Our total revenue is substantially dependent on the prices of crypto assets and volume of transactions conducted on our platform. If such price or volume declines, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected and the price of our Class A common stock could decline;
• Our net revenue may be concentrated in a limited number of areas. Within transaction revenue and subscription and services revenue, a meaningful concentration is from transactions in Bitcoin and Ethereum and stablecoin revenue in connection with USDC, respectively. If revenue from these areas declines and is not replaced by new demand for crypto assets or other products and services, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected;
• We have in the past, and may in the future, enter into partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures, or strategic alliances with third parties. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining strategic relationships with these third parties or if these third parties fail to deliver certain operational services, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected;
• Interest rate fluctuations could negatively impact us;
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• Adverse economic conditions could adversely affect our business;
• The future development and growth of crypto is subject to a variety of factors that are difficult to predict and evaluate. If crypto does not grow as we expect, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected;
• Cyberattacks and security breaches of our platform, or those impacting our customers or third parties, could adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition;
• We are subject to an extensive, highly-evolving and uncertain regulatory landscape and any adverse changes to, or our failure to comply with, any laws and regulations could adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition;
• We operate in a highly competitive industry and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected if we are unable to compete effectively;
• We compete against a growing number of decentralized and noncustodial platforms and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected if we fail to compete effectively;
• As we continue to expand and localize our international activities, our obligations to comply with the laws, rules, regulations, and policies of a variety of jurisdictions will increase and we may be subject to inquiries, investigations, and enforcement actions by U.S. and non-U.S. regulators and governmental authorities, including those related to sanctions, export control, and anti-money laundering;
• We are, and may continue to be, subject to litigation, including individual and class action lawsuits, as well as investigations and enforcement actions by regulators and governmental authorities. These matters are often expensive and time consuming, and, if resolved adversely, could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition;
• If we cannot keep pace with rapid industry changes to provide new and innovative products and services, the use of our products and services, and consequently our net revenue, could decline, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition;
• A particular crypto asset, product or service’s status as a “security” in any relevant jurisdiction is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and if we are unable to properly characterize a crypto asset or product offering, we may be subject to regulatory scrutiny, inquiries, investigations, fines, and other penalties, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition;
• We currently rely on third-party service providers for certain aspects of our operations, and any interruptions in services provided by these third parties may impair our ability to support our customers;
• Loss of a critical financial institution or insurance relationship could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition;
• Any significant disruption in our products and services, in our information technology systems, or in any of the blockchain networks we support, could result in a loss of customers or funds and adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition;
• Our failure to securely store and manage our and our customers’ fiat currencies and crypto assets could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition; and
• The theft, loss, or destruction of private keys required to access any crypto assets held in custody for our own account or for our customers may be irreversible. If we are unable to access our private keys or if we experience a hack or other data loss relating to our ability to access any crypto assets, it could cause regulatory scrutiny, reputational harm, and other losses.
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PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Coinbase Overview
Our mission is to increase ec onomic freedom in the world.
We are working to update the century-old financial system by providing a trusted platform that makes it easy for our customers to engage with crypto assets. In December 2025, we took a major step forward to becoming the Everything Exchange—dramatically expanding the assets available to trade on Coinbase, including stocks, commodity futures, perpetual futures, and prediction markets. Our goal is to create a comprehensive, seamless experience for retail users, institutions, and developers to engage in the future of finance.
We differentiate ourselves from our competition with:
• Trust : We are deeply invested in building the most secure and compliant platform. We hold customer assets one-to-one at all times.
• Ease of use : We build easy-to-use products that our customers love. We obsess over quality and craft. We strive to make financial transactions easy.
Our Business
We offer products primarily to three customer groups:
• Consumers : Retail customers seeking to hold, invest or trade crypto assets, as well as a growing set of trading offerings such as equities, prediction markets, and derivatives. Consumers use Coinbase as a primary account for crypto-enabled financial services, and to engage onchain.
• Institutions : Businesses including market makers, asset managers, hedge funds, banks, wealth platforms, registered investment advisors, payment platforms, and public and private corporations. These customers use our products to custody and trade crypto or crypto derivatives.
• Developers : Businesses, including technology companies, financial institutions (such as banks, fintechs, and retail brokers), and payment firms. These customers leverage the Base Chain and Coinbase Developer Platform to build, and scale crypto-enabled products.
Our platform serves as a secure and compliant on-ramp to the onchain economy and enables our customers to use their crypto assets in both first and third-party product experiences. Our business consists of products that we monetize through transaction fees, such as our consumer trading product suite, as well as subscription products, such as our stablecoin products. We describe these products below. Throughout this Annual Report on Form 10-K, we will refer to our full suite of products and offerings as our platform or platforms.
Transaction products
Consumer trading
Our platform is designed to serve a wide variety of consumers, whether they are buying their first crypto asset or are advanced traders. In 2025, we expanded our trading products beyond spot crypto as we built out the Everything Exchange. We now offer stocks, commodity futures, perpetual futures, and prediction markets. Our vision for the Everything Exchange is to offer a single platform to trade any asset, anywhere in the world. We offer our trading products through two trading experiences:
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• Simple trade : Our Simple trading experience offers customers the ability to buy and sell crypto assets, stocks, futures, and prediction markets using the basic interface of our platform. Simple trading focuses on consumers of all experience levels who are prioritizing ease of use.
• Advanced trade : Our Advanced trading experience offers traders access to spot and derivatives order books, real-time market information through interactive charts, a live trade history on the Advanced trade view, and other trading tools. Advanced trading focuses on sophisticated traders who are prioritizing a robust set of features to meet their more complex needs and higher volume.
We charge fees from consumers trading on our platform, including through volume-based transaction fees and a spread depending on the type of trade. Simple trading and Advanced trading fees differ due to both the typical nature of the transactions and unique benefits of each offering. Generally, Simple trading fees are higher than those on Advanced trading.
Institutional Trading and Markets
We service institutional customers via Coinbase Prime, which is our full-service prime brokerage platform where our institutional customers can access deep pools of liquidity across a network of trading venues. We offer volume-based pricing and charge a transaction fee for executed trades.
We also provide market infrastructure in the form of exchanges for customers to trade spot and derivatives. We currently operate four exchanges: the Coinbase Exchange, the Coinbase International Exchange, the Coinbase Derivatives Exchange, and the Deribit Exchange. These exchanges charge a volume-based transaction fee for executed trades.
Exchanges
Products
Assets (1)
Coinbase Exchange
Spot trading
360+ crypto assets
Coinbase International Exchange
Perpetual futures, Spot
200+ crypto assets
Coinbase Derivatives Exchange
Dated futures, Perpetual-style futures
35+ futures (crypto, commodities, equity indices)
Deribit
Options, Perpetual futures, Dated futures, Spot
15+ crypto assets
(1) Figures are reported as of the filing date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K .
Deribit is the global leader in crypto options trading by volume and open interest. Deribit accelerates both our international expansion ambitions and our derivatives offerings.
Other transaction products
• Base : Base is a decentralized L2 Ethereum blockchain offering fast, low-cost, global onchain transactions. Base has processed billions of transactions since launch and supports an expanding ecosystem of onchain applications across capital markets, trading, payments, and more. Our goal for Base is to bring one million developers and one billion users onchain to build a global economy. Coinbase generates revenue from sequencer fees paid each time a transaction is processed on the Base blockchain.
• Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet) : The Base App is a self-custodial wallet product. It is the evolution of our prior Coinbase Wallet offering, which we offer globally, subject to applicable laws and app availability. The Base App integrates trading, payments, a social feed, and access to decentralized applications. Built on open protocols, users maintain ownership of their identity, assets, and social connections across the onchain ecosystem. Base App users have sole control over the cryptographic keys to access their assets, which are stored directly on their mobile devices or personal storage accounts and not with a centralized entity. Coinbase is unable by default to assist in recovery if a user loses access to their wallet, because the cryptographic key
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is unilaterally controlled by the user. Users do, however, have an option in the Base App to add a recovery signer that would allow them to recover access.
Subscription products and other services
Stablecoins
Stablecoins play a key role in updating the financial system and advancing economic freedom by combining the benefits of crypto rails, which are global, cheap, and fast, with an asset that is stable relative to fiat currencies. We offer a variety of stablecoins denominated in multiple fiat currencies on our platform, and we continue to explore partnerships with a number of stablecoin issuers to expand our offerings.
In 2018, we partnered with Circle Internet Financial, LLC (“Circle”) to launch USDC, with the goal of driving global, mainstream adoption of stablecoins. Circle and its affiliate, Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS, are the issuers of USDC, a stablecoin redeemable on a one-to-one basis for U.S. dollars, and Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS is the issuer of EURC, a stablecoin redeemable on a one-to-one basis for Euros. In August 2023, we entered into an updated arrangement with Circle to (i) support USDC; (ii) help drive long-term success of the stablecoin ecosystem; and (iii) share in the economics of the reserves backing stablecoins in circulation both on and off our platform (the “Circle Agreement”). Pursuant to the Circle Agreement, Circle is the issuer of USDC, holds the relevant trademarks which we can use, and pays us for our role in the growth of USDC: the greater the proportion of USDC in circulation generally and on our platform, the greater our revenue generated under the Circle Agreement.
The Circle Agreement has an initial three-year term. Upon completion of the initial term, we and Circle will discuss in good faith whether any modifications to the Circle Agreement are warranted. If such modifications are not agreed upon, the Circle Agreement will automatically renew for additional three-year terms unless we or Circle fail to meet the conditions specified in the Circle Agreement. These conditions are the satisfaction of a Product Threshold, a Company Threshold, and a Reseller Threshold (as defined in the Circle Agreement). If the conditions are satisfied, the Circle Agreement cannot be terminated.
Separate from any renewal, there are certain circumstances under which the parties could initiate a restructuring of the agreement. In such an event, if an amendment or restructuring is not possible or Circle does not make payments to us following such a restructuring period, we can require the assignment of certain trademarks by Circle to us, which would then impact the arrangement between the parties and Circle’s ability to issue other U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins.
We and Circle may, from time to time, enter into arrangements with third parties approved by both us and Circle (such third parties, “approved participants”) that provide for fees to be paid to such approved participants to increase the circulation of stablecoins subject to the Circle Agreement. In anticipation of such arrangements, in November 2024, we and Circle entered into a supplement to the Circle Agreement, pursuant to which we and Circle will agree upon the fees that such third parties are eligible to receive and the undertakings to be required of them upon becoming an approved participant. We have filed a copy of the Circle Agreement and its 2024 supplement as exhibits to this Annual Report on Form 10-K in order to provide investors with additional information about this partnership.
Historically, we have observed that customers holding USDC on our platform are more likely to use our other products, such as trading. Therefore, where permitted, we pay rewards to both Coinbase One subscribers as well as institutional customers who hold USDC to incentivize on-platform use and deeper engagement with our product suite.
Blockchain Rewards
Certain blockchain protocols, such as Ethereum and Solana, rely on staking to validate blockchain transactions, an essential operation to these protocols’ operations and an alternative consensus
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mechanism to mining. Network participants can designate a certain amount of their crypto assets on the network to validate transactions and earn rewards. Today, many users choose to outsource the technical processes involved in staking by staking through a service provider.
We provide an onchain staking service, which allows our customers to stake their assets with a few clicks. Our customers maintain full ownership of their crypto assets while earning staking rewards. Customers who stake their assets receive rewards, paid out by applicable blockchain protocols, in the form of the network’s crypto asset. The rewards rates, expressed as an annual percentage yield, vary by asset. In return for the services we provide, we earn a fixed percentage commission on all staking rewards received.
Because staking rewards depend on the relevant protocol and network conditions, the estimated rewards rate for each asset made available for staking is displayed on our website and through our platform, and is calculated by periodically consulting onchain data to determine the total amount. We only facilitate staking of a consumer’s crypto assets in response to a direct instruction from that consumer, and the staked crypto assets remain the property of the consumer and in our custody while staked. According to certain protocol rules, staked crypto assets cannot be sold or transferred while they remain staked, and we do not use or allocate consumers’ staked crypto assets for any other purpose.
Subject to jurisdiction, we support eight staking assets through our platform for consumers as of December 31, 2025: Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX), Cosmos (ATOM), Polkadot (DOT), Ethereum (ETH), MATIC (POL), Solana (SOL), and Tezos (XTZ). As of December 31, 2025, approximately $7.5 billion worth of these assets were held on behalf of individual consumers staked through our platform, as measured in U.S. dollar equivalents.
For our institutional customers, our staking process varies by customer. In addition to operating our own validator nodes to provide staking services, we also provide institutional customers access to validator nodes operated by third-party service providers. Institutional customers receive rewards directly from the protocol. The fees we charge to institutional customers depend on the customer agreement and the selected service. As of December 31, 2025, over $15.2 billion worth of assets were staked by institutional customers through Coinbase Prime, as adjusted to USD.
We also operate a cbETH token wrapping service. cbETH is an Ethereum-based “wrapped staking token” that represents ownership of ETH staked through our platform. Eligible customers can obtain cbETH tokens by wrapping their staked ETH or by purchasing cbETH tokens on our exchange or on third-party exchanges. A cbETH holder can sell or transfer their cbETH within the Coinbase app or send cbETH to a self-custodial wallet or to other addresses on the Ethereum blockchain. Selling or otherwise transferring cbETH automatically transfers ownership of the underlying staked ETH, along with any rewards earned.
There are risks associated with our staking services, which are described in the risk factor in the section titled “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K: “ We may suffer losses due to staking, delegating, and other related services we provide to our customers. ”
Institutional financing
Financing is an increasingly important offering to our institutional customers. We offer integrated financing products and services to institutional customers that meet our credit criteria to access liquidity for their hedging, trading, and working capital needs. Our lending product set includes tools to allow clients to trade in real time, products that enable leverage and ability to short sell across our Prime and Markets offerings, and structured loans supporting client working capital and other needs.
In addition to lending, we borrow fiat, crypto assets, and stablecoins from third parties, including eligible institutional customers, to facilitate our financing products. We also offer a managed lending product for eligible institutional customers under our Agency Lending offering.
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The terms of our lending and borrowing arrangements may vary modestly from customer to customer. For additional information, see Note 5. Collateralized Arrangements and Financing of the Notes to our Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and Risk Factors—We provide secured loans to our customers, which exposes us to credit risks and may cause us to incur financial or reputational harm included in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Custodial Interest
We earn interest on customer custodial funds held at third-party depository institutions, which is influenced by customer funds on our platform and prevailing interest rates.
Other subscription and services products
• Custody : Through Coinbase Prime, we offer an institutional-grade custody platform with a highly secure cold storage solution both within the United States and globally. We charge institutions a separate fee based on the total assets stored in custody on our platform. For example, we serve as a custodian for several Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF issuers. We now also offer an orchestrated hot wallet custody solution, enabling faster transaction execution and enhanced liquidity while maintaining institutional-grade security. We do not charge our consumers a separate fee to securely store their crypto assets on our platform.
• Coinbase One : Coinbase One is a consumer subscription product for which consumers pay a monthly or annual fee to unlock a variety of benefits, including limited reduced transaction fee trading, USDC rewards, higher staking rewards than non-Coinbase One subscribers, priority customer service support, and offers from third-party partners. In 2025, we launched an additional subscription tier, Coinbase One Basic, offering consumers essential benefits for a lower subscription fee. There are now three membership tiers under Coinbase One: Basic, Preferred, and Premium. We also launched the Coinbase One credit card in 2025, allowing users to earn up to 4% Bitcoin back on every purchase. Consumers are able to increase their rewards rate by increasing their balances held on the platform. Coinbase One serves two purposes: generating recurring subscription revenue and deepening user engagement across our product suite. We generate direct revenue from Coinbase One subscription fees. Coinbase One users engage with the rest of our product suite, generating trading revenue, staking commission, credit card interchange fees, and more.
• Coinbase developer platform : Coinbase developer platform (“CDP”) is an infrastructure solution that provides businesses of all sizes with a single entry point to build and scale crypto offerings onchain. By consolidating payments, trading, wallets, and stablecoins into a single onboarding flow and offering self-serve application programming interfaces, software development kits, and tools, CDP simplifies the integration of crypto functionality into products, enabling faster and more efficient adoption of blockchain technology.
Trusted crypto platform
Coinbase is the most trusted crypto platform.
We place great importance on securely storing crypto assets, and we have policies and procedures to help ensure the proper storing of the crypto assets we hold on behalf of our customers and for our own investment and operating purposes. When customers use our platform, their assets remain their assets.
Our products, services and educational offerings incorporate a holistic, customer-centric set of digital engagement practices, including educational content and notifications, which are designed, in part, to promote financial literacy and awareness and to provide customers with guidance and information to help them make better informed decisions. Examples of these offerings include, among others: (i) educational materials, including but not limited to an online collection of how-to guides and tutorials (ii) in-app
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engagement, including features designed to enable consumers to start small and build crypto asset holdings with confidence over time, including through rewards to customers in connection with the completion of certain milestones, (iii) sweepstakes, and (iv) differentiated marketing, including paid digital and social media marketing campaigns, as well as email campaigns, search engage optimization, in-app banners, push and pop-up notifications, paid search marketing, and affiliate marketing.
For additional information, see Risk Factors—Laws and regulations regarding conflicts of interest associated with the use of predictive data analytics, digital engagement practices, and similar technologies, if adopted and found to be applicable to our business, may require us to modify, limit, or discontinue our use of certain technologies and features contained within our products and services and may impact the way that we interact with existing and prospective customers, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition included in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Custodial practices
We store crypto assets using proprietary technology and operational processes. Crypto assets are not insured or guaranteed by any government or government agency; however, we have worked hard to securely store our customers’ crypto assets and our own crypto assets for investment and operational purposes with legal and operational protections.
We appropriately ledger, properly segregate, and maintain separate accounts for our corporate crypto assets and customers’ crypto assets. With respect to Coinbase entities that provide cold storage custody services, such as Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC (“CCTC”) and Coinbase Luxembourg S.A. (which is required to hold its client assets in segregated cold storage under the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (“MiCA”)), crypto assets are held separately in dedicated addresses and managed using a proprietary combination of software and hardware security modules. For Coinbase entities that provide crypto trading services, such as Coinbase, Inc., crypto assets are held in an omnibus manner on the blockchain and separately recorded using a ledger system. As a U.S. public company, we are required to undergo annual audits and quarterly reviews, which require that our independent registered public accounting firm reviews and audits our internal controls and reconciliation processes. Our various user, custody, and client agreements outline the applicability of Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) Article 8 to crypto assets under custody. UCC Article 8 provides that financial assets held in the United States by Coinbase for its customers are not property of Coinbase and not subject to claims of our general creditors.
We utilize both hot wallets and cold wallets in our custodial solutions. We actively manage wallet balances and generally seek to hold no more than 2% of assets under custody in hot wallets at any given time. Cold wallet private key materials are stored and secured at facilities within the United States and internationally. We store the substantial majority of our own crypto asset holdings utilizing the same storage solutions that we provide to our customers. In limited cases, we use storage solutions not offered to our customers to store immaterial amounts of crypto assets held for corporate purposes outside of our core custodial product offerings. Deribit and Coinbase Asset Management utilize Coinbase custody services and third parties as custodians.
A key risk mitigation measure we utilize is ensuring that wallet private keys are never stored in plaintext format in any location. The cryptographic consensus of multiple human approvers is required to decrypt a private key for both hot and cold wallets. No single individual can control or operate Coinbase’s wallet private keys. To the extent a customer withdrawal requires movement of assets from a cold wallet, authority to release proceeds from the cold wallet resides with a geographically distributed team of professionals, all of whom are subject to enhanced background checks.
We perform internal audits of the private key management process and reconciliations between Coinbase wallets and third-party blockchain data. Coinbase, Inc. and CCTC, the two subsidiaries that custody the majority of crypto assets on platform, are periodically examined by regulators, including the
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New York State Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”) and various states in which such entities hold money transmission licenses. In the event of an insurable loss of assets for which we file a claim, we may be expected to provide insurance claim investigators access to inspect the assets under custody and supporting systems.
We do not use third-party sub-custodians, where one custodian holds assets on behalf of another custodian, for the management and storage of digital assets. In accordance with applicable state money transmitter laws, we hold U.S. customers’ USD cash at FDIC-insured depository institutions, NCUSIF-insured credit unions, and in money market funds in accounts explicitly named to further demonstrate that we are holding the funds as custodian. We believe the terms of the relevant account agreements to be comparable to those offered to similar companies.
Other policies and procedures
We also have policies in place to help us govern accounting controls, including customer account initiations and reconciliations, and to help prevent improper self-dealing and other conflicts of interest between us and our customers on our platform. When we make investments in crypto assets, we execute investment trades away from our platform to avoid any conflict of interest with our customers. Additionally, Coinbase is committed to providing a fair, transparent, and equitable experience across our suite of trading products. Crypto assets and use cases are rapidly expanding and Coinbase seeks to offer our customers secure access to all legal assets and use cases. For example, we take a number of steps to mitigate conflicts in our digital asset listing process. We review asset listing procedures with a group of senior leaders from across the company. These leaders review the relevant aspects of any asset escalated to them in connection with a listing on our platform in accordance with our digital asset support policies and procedures. We have seen an increase in the rate of assets created and increased demand for listings, and we continue to evaluate our processes to meet this increased demand.
Further, we carefully handle and keep customer data confidential through security and encryption as well as policies, training, and monitoring. Moreover, we invest heavily in compliance tools. For example, in addition to robust know-your-customer (“KYC”) and anti-money laundering programs, we employ an industry leading third-party trade surveillance software platform that helps us monitor and detect problematic trading activities on our platform, as further discussed below. We have also invested in a range of technologies that are designed to help identify and prevent harmful activity on our platform, including fraud or account takeovers.
As we maintain, grow, and expand our product and services offerings we also must scale and strengthen our internal controls and processes, and monitor our third-party partners’ and vendors’ ability to similarly scale and strengthen in order for us to remain an industry leader and a trusted platform. Additionally, we have procedures to process redemptions and withdrawals expeditiously, subject to the terms of applicable user agreements. For additional information, see Risk Factors—Our failure to securely store and manage our and our customers’ fiat currencies and crypto assets could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition and Risk Factors—Depositing and withdrawing crypto assets into and from our platforms involve risks, which could result in loss of customer assets, customer disputes and other liabilities, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition included in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Competition
The crypto industry is highly innovative, rapidly evolving, and characterized by healthy competition, experimentation, changing customer needs, frequent introductions of new products and services, and is subject to uncertain and evolving industry and regulatory requirements. We face significant competition from a variety of companies around the world—ranging from crypto-native companies, including decentralized exchanges, to large traditional financial services incumbents and financial technology providers.
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Our main competition falls into the following categories:
• traditional financial services and financial technology companies. This includes companies that offer crypto powered products, as well as companies that only offer traditional products, such as stocks. With the expansion in our product offerings in 2025 to include stocks, prediction markets and more, our competitive set in this category has broadened;
• companies focused on the crypto asset market, some of whom adhere to local regulations and directly compete with our platform, and others that choose to operate outside of local rules and regulations or in jurisdictions with less stringent local rules and regulations and are potentially able to more quickly adapt to trends, support a greater number of crypto assets, and develop new crypto-based products and services due to a different standard of regulatory scrutiny;
• crypto-focused companies and traditional financial incumbents that offer point or siloed solutions specifically targeted at institutional customers;
• decentralized and non-custodial platforms; and
• stablecoins, other than USDC, and fiat currencies globally.
The competitive landscape varies significantly by geography, and many offerings are global in nature. The traditional financial services and financial technology companies we compete against are largely U.S.- and European-based and operate under the same evolving regulatory landscape that we do. However, we also face competition from companies, in particular those located outside the United States, who are subject to significantly less stringent regulatory and compliance requirements in their local jurisdictions. Their business models rely on being unregulated or only regulated in a small number of lower compliance jurisdictions, while also offering their products in highly regulated jurisdictions, including the United States, without necessarily complying with the relevant regulatory requirements in such jurisdictions. As regulations and compliance requirements in the United States become clearer, we may face increased competition from U.S.-based companies.
We differentiate ourselves from our competition first through our focus on building easy to use products, and second through investing in our trusted brand as a compliant and secure platform. We also differentiate through rapid product innovation, and by building products that are onchain native, such as staking, access to decentralized exchanges, access to decentralized borrowing and lending markets and more. See the section titled “ Risk Factors ” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a more comprehensive description of risks related to competition.
Human Capital
Powering Coinbase is no small task, and requires hiring, developing, and retaining the most talented individuals who are deeply passionate about our mission to increase economic freedom and who are excited to build new products and services.
We work incredibly hard in pursuit of ambitious goals. We signal who will thrive at Coinbase by being transparent about our culture on our website. We operate with the following tenets:
• Clear communication
• Efficient execution
• Act like an owner
• Top talent
• Championship team
• Continuous learning
• Customer focus
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• Repeatable innovation
• Positive energy
• Mission first
We are a remote-first company. We believe that allowing our employees to work in the location that best suits them provides us access to a large talent pool and a sustained advantage in hiring and retaining employees in the United States and worldwide.
We offer competitive, transparent compensation, and unique learning. We conduct an annual market review to ensure our compensation continues to be consistent with our competitive compensation philosophy. We have single, transparent pay targets for the vast majority of our roles—eliminating most compensation negotiations—and provide one-year equity grants for the vast majority of employees. We have also made meaningful investments in learning and development, including offering an annual learning stipend and in-house crypto learning curriculum.
We continuously improve our people programs and practices. We regularly monitor engagement through pulse surveys to continuously optimize our culture, employee engagement, risk management, and productivity. We invest in these surveys and associated action planning at the executive level, as we believe our people and culture are key drivers of business success.
As of December 31, 2025, we had 4,951 employees.
Government Regulation
We are subject to a variety of laws and regulations in the United States and abroad that involve matters central to our business operations and future business plans. Many of these laws and regulations continue to evolve through legislative and regulatory action and judicial interpretation, and may be modified, interpreted, and applied in an inconsistent manner from one jurisdiction to another, and may conflict with one another. Moreover, the complexity and evolving nature of our business and the significant uncertainty surrounding the regulation of the products we offer, require us to exercise our judgment as to whether certain laws, rules, and regulations apply to us, and it is possible that regulators may disagree with our conclusions.
Therefore, we monitor these areas closely and invest significant resources in our legal, compliance, product, and engineering teams to ensure our business practices evolve to help us comply with the current laws, regulations, and legal standards to which we are subject, as well as to plan and prepare for changes in interpretations thereof, as well as additional laws, regulations, and legal standards that are introduced in the future.
For additional information about government regulation applicable to our business, see the sections titled “ Risk Factors ” and “ Legal Proceedings ” in Part I, Item 1A and 3, respectively, of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing
We are subject to various anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws, including the Bank Secrecy Act (the “BSA”) in the United States, and similar laws and regulations abroad. In the United States, as a money services business registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), we are required under the BSA to among other things, develop, implement, and maintain a risk-based anti-money laundering program, provide an anti-money laundering-related training program, report suspicious activities and transactions to FinCEN, comply with certain reporting and recordkeeping requirements, and collect and maintain information about our customers. In addition, the BSA requires us to comply with certain customer due diligence requirements as part of our anti-money laundering obligations, including developing risk-based policies, procedures, and internal controls reasonably designed to verify a customer’s identity. Many states and other countries impose similar and, in some
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cases, more stringent requirements related to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing. Our compliance program is designed to prevent and detect instances of money laundering, terrorist financing, and other illicit activity on our platform. It is also designed to prohibit the use of Coinbase in sanctioned jurisdictions, or by sanctioned persons or entities, as determined by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”), and equivalent foreign authorities. It includes policies, procedures, reporting protocols, and internal controls, and is designed to address legal and regulatory requirements as well as to assist us in managing risks associated with money laundering and terrorist financing. As part of our compliance program, we limit the use of our products and services to jurisdictions where we are legally able to offer our products and services, and customers can only use our products and services in the specific jurisdictions we have approved. We enforce such geographic restrictions though various onboarding and login controls to limit a customer from accessing products or services outside of their jurisdiction-based permissions. Additionally, we have a robust KYC program, which is a central part of our anti-money laundering program. Our KYC program is governed by our Global KYC Policy that covers customer onboarding, and includes customer due diligence; calculation and assessment of customer risk rating; application of due diligence on high risk customers; and screening customers global sanctions lists. Following the customer onboarding process, we perform ongoing monitoring of customers and transaction activity to ensure that potentially activity is appropriately detected, and when appropriate, reported. Anti-money regulations are constantly evolving and vary from jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction. We continuously monitor our compliance with anti-money and counter-terrorist financing regulations and industry standards and implement policies, procedures, and controls in light of the most current legal requirements.
For a description of the risks we may face from (i) unauthorized or impermissible customer access to our products and services outside of jurisdictions where we have determined to make such products and services available or (ii) an assertion of jurisdiction over our operations or the crypto assets we offer by U.S. and foreign regulators and other government entities, see the following risk factors in the section titled “ Risk Factors ” in Part I, Item 1A of this Annual Report on Form 10-K: (i) “ We are subject to an extensive, highly-evolving and uncertain regulatory landscape and any adverse changes to, or our failure to comply with, any laws and regulations could adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition ”; (ii) “ As we continue to expand and localize our international activities, our obligations to comply with the laws, rules, regulations, and policies of a variety of jurisdictions will increase and we may be subject to inquiries, investigations, and enforcement actions by U.S. and non-U.S. regulators and governmental authorities, including those related to sanctions, export control, and anti-money laundering ”; and (iii) “ A particular crypto asset, product or service’s status as a “security” in any relevant jurisdiction is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and if we are to properly characterize a crypto asset or product offering, we may be subject to regulatory , inquiries, , , and other , which may affect our business, operating results, and financial condition .”
Money transmission, stored value, and virtual currency business activity
In the United States, we have obtained licenses to operate as a money transmitter or the equivalent in the states where such licenses or equivalent are required to conduct our business, as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In addition, we have obtained a BitLicense from NYDFS and a Virtual Currency Business License from Louisiana. As a licensed money transmitter and an entity subject to the BitLicense regulatory regime, we are subject to, among other things, the BSA, restrictions, and requirements with respect to the investment of customer funds and use and safeguarding of customer funds and crypto assets, and bonding, minimum capital and net worth requirements, prudential compliance obligations associated with customer notice and disclosure, reporting and recordkeeping requirements applicable to the company, as well as requirements relating to the screening of control persons and inspection and examination by state regulatory agencies. These state licensing laws also cover matters such as regulatory approval of controlling shareholders, directors, and senior management of the licensed entity.
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Outside the United States, we have obtained a number of licenses to provide crypto-asset custody and trading services. In Singapore, we hold a major payment institution license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In Australia, we are registered as a digital currency exchange provider with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre. We are also registered as a Reporting Entity with the Financial Intelligence Unit of India and as a Money Services Business with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada; we have also registered as a Restricted Dealer by the Canadian Securities Administrators, with the Ontario Securities Commission as its Principal Regulator. In Bermuda, we have obtained a ‘Class ‘F’ (Full) Digital Asset Business License from the Bermuda Monetary Authority enabling us to service consumer trading in numerous approved jurisdictions. In addition, we have obtained Virtual Asset Service Provider registrations in Argentina and the United Kingdom through which we offer crypto custody and trading services in these countries, as well as a MiCA license in Luxembourg to offer crypto custody and trading services across the European Economic Area (“EEA”). Additionally, Deribit has a conditional Virtual Asset Service Provider license issued by the Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority of Dubai. Under these licenses and registrations, we are subject to a broad range of rules and regulations including in respect of anti-money laundering, safeguarding of customer assets and funds, regulatory capital requirements, fit and proper management, operational controls, corporate governance, customer disclosures, reporting, and record keeping.
Electronic money and payment institution
We serve our customers through Electronic Money Institutions authorized by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority and the Central Bank of Ireland. We comply with rules and regulations applicable to the European e-money industry, including those related to funds safeguarding, corporate governance, anti-money laundering, disclosure, reporting, and inspection. We are, or may be, subject to banking-related regulations in other countries now or in the future related to our role in the financial industry.
New York State trust company
Our subsidiary, CCTC, operates as a New York State-chartered limited purpose trust company, which is subject to regulation, examination, and supervision by the NYDFS. NYDFS regulations impose various compliance requirements including, without limitation, operational limitations related to the nature of crypto assets we can hold under custody, capital requirements, BSA and anti-money laundering program requirements, affiliate transaction limitations, and notice and reporting requirements.
Securities
In recent years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and U.S. state securities regulators have stated that certain digital assets or digital asset products may be classified as securities under U.S. federal and state securities laws, and in the case of the SEC, has made public statements on this topic—however, these statements are not binding or definitive guidance. A number of enforcement actions and regulatory proceedings have since been initiated and concluded against digital assets and digital asset products, as well as against trading platforms that support digital assets and digital asset products. The SEC has characterized a number of crypto assets, products, and services as securities in these regulatory proceedings and enforcement actions, including an enforcement action brought against us. On February 28, 2025, we, Coinbase, Inc. and the SEC jointly stipulated to dismissal of SEC v. Coinbase, Inc. et al. with prejudice. The case is now concluded. The SEC has stated more recently that a crypto asset itself is not a security, but there is uncertainty and inconsistency in the courts that have grappled with the issue of whether or how certain crypto asset transactions could be deemed securities. Several foreign governments have also issued similar that digital assets may be deemed to be securities or other similarly regulated financial instruments under the laws of their jurisdictions. We have established policies and practices to evaluate each crypto asset we consider for listing, , or for custody. We also evaluate all other products and services prior to launch under U.S. federal and applicable international securities laws.
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Our subsidiary, Coinbase Capital Markets Corporation, operates as a SEC-registered broker-dealer and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”), and in December 2025, began offering equities trading to individual U.S. customers as an introducing broker in partnership with a carrying broker.
Commodities and derivatives
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) has stated, and CFTC enforcement actions have confirmed, that many crypto assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, fall within the definition of a “commodity” under the U.S. Commodities Exchange Act of 1936 (the “CEA”). Under the CEA, the CFTC has broad enforcement authority to police market manipulation and fraud in spot commodity markets, including the spot crypto markets. We are subject to such authority with respect to improper trading on our platform. In addition, CFTC regulations and CFTC oversight and enforcement authority apply with respect to futures, swaps, other derivative products, and certain retail leveraged commodity transactions involving crypto assets, including the markets on which these products trade. Separately, security-based swaps are subject to SEC regulation and oversight. In general, we seek to ensure that crypto asset transactions on our crypto asset trading platform do not constitute futures, swaps, security-based swaps, other derivative products, or retail leveraged commodity transactions. Our subsidiary, Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. (“CFM”) operates as a futures commission merchant (“FCM”) and in December 2025, began offering event contracts. In September 2023, Coinbase International Exchange secured regulatory approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to enable perpetual futures for eligible non-U.S. customers, and in February 2022, we acquired LMX Labs, LLC, a designated contract market (“DCM”) regulated by the CFTC which now operates as the Coinbase Derivatives Exchange, in connection with our acquisition of FairXchange, Inc. FCMs and DCMs are subject to the rules of the National Futures Association as well as numerous regulatory requirements, including strict capital requirements. Our subsidiary, Coinbase Financial Services Europe Ltd is licensed as a derivatives broker under Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, subject to the supervision of the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission to offer derivatives products to eligible customers in the European Union. Deribit FZE operates a derivatives exchange under the supervision of the Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority of Dubai. While many of our products are offered under the authority of the CFTC, state laws and regulations may create obligations or constraints on our business. We may become subject to regulatory or legal with respect to our compliance with these requirements.
Anti-corruption, economic and trade sanctions and export controls
We are subject to anti-corruption and economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations in the United States and other jurisdictions in which we operate. Anti-corruption laws, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States and the Bribery Act 2010 in the United Kingdom (the “Bribery Act”), generally prohibit companies and those acting on their behalf from making improper payments to foreign government officials and political figures for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business or to gain an unfair business advantage. Some of these laws, such as the Bribery Act, also prohibit improper payments between private entities and persons. Economic and trade sanctions programs that are administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s OFAC and equivalent applicable foreign authorities prohibit or restrict transactions to or from, or dealings with or involving, certain countries, regions, governments, and in certain circumstances, specified individuals and entities such as narcotics traffickers, terrorists, and terrorist organizations, as well as certain digital currency addresses owned by the foregoing. We are also required to comply with export control laws and regulations administered by the United States and other applicable jurisdictions, including those administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security. We have implemented compliance programs and controls designed to comply with the laws and regulations to which we are subject.
Privacy and protection of user data
We are subject to a number of laws, rules, directives, and regulations relating to the collection, use, retention, security, processing, and transfer of personally identifiable information about our customers and
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employees in the countries where we operate. Our business relies on the processing of personal data in many jurisdictions and the movement of data across national borders. As a result, much of the personal data that we process, which may include certain financial information associated with individuals, is regulated by multiple privacy and data protection laws and, in some cases, the privacy and data protection laws of multiple jurisdictions. In many cases, these laws apply not only to third-party transactions, but also to transfers of information between or among us, our subsidiaries, and other parties with which we have commercial relationships.
Consumer protection
The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), and other U.S. federal, state, and local and foreign regulatory agencies regulate financial products, including money transfer services related to remittance or peer-to-peer transfers. These agencies, as well as certain other governmental bodies, including state attorneys general, have broad consumer protection mandates and discretion in enforcing consumer protection laws, including matters related to unfair or deceptive, and, in the case of the CFPB, abusive acts or practices (“UDAAPs”), and they promulgate, interpret, and enforce rules and regulations that affect our business. The CFPB has enforcement authority to prevent an entity that offers or provides consumer financial services or products in the United States from committing or engaging in UDAAPs or violating other federal consumer financial laws, including the ability to engage in joint investigations with other agencies, issue subpoenas and civil investigative demands, conduct hearings and adjudication proceedings, commence a civil action, grant relief (e.g., limit activities or functions; rescission of contracts), and refer matters for criminal proceedings. Market disruptions have led to certain attempts by consumer protection focused agencies, including the CFPB, to directly regulate the crypto industry. New laws or regulations, or changes in enforcement of existing laws or regulations could require us to change certain business practices related to consumer disclosures, marketing and operational features related to payments and remittance regulations and other laws that may impact our business.
Escheatment and unclaimed property regulations
We are subject to unclaimed property laws in the United States and in certain other jurisdictions where we operate. These laws may require us to turn over to certain government authorities the property of others held by us that has been unclaimed for a specified period of time, including airdropped tokens and forked crypto assets. These laws may also require us to liquidate that property prior to turning it over. We hold property subject to unclaimed property laws; however, there is significant regulatory uncertainty with how certain states and foreign jurisdictions treat crypto assets under unclaimed property rules.
Lending law
We originate secured commercial loans in certain states in the United States. As a result, our lending activities are subject to various state lending laws and licensure requirements with respect to lending activities within such states. These state lending laws may be enforced by state attorneys general, state financial regulators, and private litigants, among others. Given our novel business model and uncertainty regarding application of some of these laws and regulations, we may become subject to regulatory scrutiny or legal challenge with respect to our compliance with these requirements.
Interchange fees
Interchange fees associated with four-party payments systems are being reviewed or challenged in various jurisdictions. For example, in the E.U., the Multilateral Interchange Fee Regulation caps interchange fees for credit and debit card payments and provides for business rules to be complied with by any company dealing with card transactions, including us. As a result, the fees that we collect in certain jurisdictions may become the subject of regulatory challenge.
Prepaid cards, card association and payment network rules
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Prepaid card programs are subject to various federal and state laws and regulations, including consumer financial protection regulations such as the CFPB’s Regulation E, which imposes requirements on issuers of prepaid cards.
In addition to the federal and state laws and regulations governing prepaid cards, we, as well as the banks that issue our Coinbase Card and Coinbase One Credit Card, are subject to and required to comply with card association and payment network rules and guidelines which apply to prepaid cards. The card association and payment network rules govern a variety of areas, including how consumers and merchants may use their cards and data security, and may be changed periodically. The laws, rules and regulations impose compliance obligations and costs on our business, and failure to comply could result in litigation, enforcement actions, penalties, or the termination of our ability to offer prepaid cards.
Furthermore, the bylaws and agreements between clearing house participants, payment networks, and credit and debit card issuers impose specific responsibilities and liabilities for issuers of debit and credit cards and the brands that partner with such issuers. We, as well as the banks that issue our Coinbase Card (debit) and our Coinbase One Credit Card (credit), are required to comply with the appropriate National Automated Clearing House Association (“NACHA”), bylaws, operating rules, and agreements, as well as card network rules and guidelines, each as applicable. Additional new products and services that we offer may also impose additional obligations on us to comply with NACHA and card network obligations related to preventing fraud, money laundering, and IT security breaches.
Intellectual Property
The protection of our technology and intellectual property is an important aspect of our business. We rely upon a variety of protections, including a combination of patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, confidentiality procedures, and contractual commitments. We co-founded the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, and pledged to only use our crypto technology patents defensively. We may also in the future agree to license our patents to third parties as part of various patent pools and open patent projects.
Corporate Information
We were initially incorporated in May 2012 as Coinbase, Inc., a Delaware corporation. In January 2014, Coinbase Global, Inc. was incorporated as a Delaware corporation to act as the holding company of Coinbase, Inc. and our other subsidiaries. In April 2014, we completed a corporate reorganization whereby Coinbase, Inc. became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coinbase Global, Inc. In December 2025, Coinbase Global, Inc. converted to a Texas corporation. Coinbase Global, Inc.’s principal assets are its interests in the equity of Coinbase, Inc. In addition to Coinbase, Inc., Coinbase Global, Inc. is the parent company of a number of other operating subsidiaries. We are a remote-first company, meaning the majority of our employees work remotely. Due to this, we do not maintain a headquarters.
Coinbase, the Coinbase logo, and other registered or common law trade names, trademarks, or service marks of Coinbase included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of Coinbase. Other trademarks, service marks, or trade names included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the property of their respective owners.
Available Information
We file our annual, periodic and current reports, and other required information, electronically with the SEC and this information is available at www.sec.gov. We also make available on our website at www.coinbase.com, free of charge, copies of these reports and other information as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC.
We use our Investor Relations website (investor.coinbase.com), our blog (blog.coinbase.com), press releases, public conference calls and webcasts, our X feed (@coinbase), Brian Armstrong’s X feed (@brian_armstrong), our LinkedIn page, and our YouTube channel as means of disclosing material non-
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public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. The information disclosed by the foregoing channels could be deemed to be material information. As such, we encourage investors, the media, and others to follow the channels listed above and to review the information disclosed through such channels. The contents of the websites referred to above are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks and uncertainties described below, together with all of the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the Consolidated Financial Statements and related notes. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of or that we deem immaterial may also become important factors that adversely affect our business. If any of the following risks occur, our business, operating results, financial condition, and future prospects could be materially and adversely affected. Many risks affect more than one category, and the risks are not in order of significance or probability of occurrence because they have been grouped by categories. The market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment due to any of these risks.
The Most Material Risks Related to Our Business and Financial Position
Our operating results have and will significantly fluctuate, including due to the highly volatile nature of crypto.
Due to the highly volatile nature of prices of crypto assets, our operating results have, and will continue to, fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter in accordance with market sentiments and movements in the broader onchain economy. Our operating results will continue to fluctuate significantly as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are unpredictable and in certain instances are outside of our control, including:
• crypto asset trading activity, including trading volume and the prevailing trading prices for crypto assets, which can be highly volatile;
• our ability to attract, maintain, grow, and engage our customer and developer base;
• changes in the legislative or regulatory environment, or actions by U.S. or foreign governments or regulators, including fines, orders, or consent decrees;
• regulatory changes or scrutiny that impact our ability to offer certain products or services;
• our ability to continue to diversify and grow our subscription and services revenue, including our stablecoin revenue;
• our mix of revenue between transaction and subscription and services;
• pricing for, or temporary suspensions of, our products and services;
• adding crypto assets to, or removing from, our platform;
• our ability to establish and maintain partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures, or strategic alliances with third parties;
• fluctuations in the market values of our marketable and strategic investments;
• market conditions of, and overall sentiment towards, crypto;
• macroeconomic conditions, including interest rates, inflation, changes in tariffs and trade restrictions, extended U.S. federal government shutdowns, and instability in the global banking system;
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• adverse legal proceedings or regulatory enforcement actions, judgments, settlements, or other legal proceedings, and enforcement-related costs;
• the development and introduction of existing and new products and services by us or our competitors;
• the amount and timing of our operating expenses related to the maintenance and expansion of our business and operations, including investments we make in the development of products and services, as well as technology offered to our developers, international expansion, and sales and marketing;
• system failures, outages or interruptions, including with respect to our platform and third-party crypto networks;
• our lack of control over decentralized or third-party blockchains and networks that may experience downtime, cyberattacks, critical failures, errors, bugs, corrupted files, data losses, or other similar software failures, outages, breaches and losses;
• breaches of security or privacy;
• inaccessibility of our platform due to our or third-party actions;
• our ability to attract and retain talent; and
• our ability to compete with our competitors.
As a result of these factors, it is difficult for us to forecast growth trends accurately and our business and future prospects are difficult to evaluate, particularly in the short term.
In view of the rapidly evolving nature of our business and the volatility of the markets in which we operate, period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful, and you should not rely upon them as an indication of future performance. Quarterly and annual expenses reflected in our financial statements may be significantly different from historical or projected rates. Our operating results in one or more future quarters may fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors. As a result, the trading price of our Class A common stock may increase or decrease significantly.
Our total revenue is substantially dependent on the prices of crypto assets and volume of transactions conducted on our platform. If such price or volume declines, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected and the price of our Class A common stock could decline.
We generate a large portion of our total revenue from transaction fees on our platform in connection with the purchase, sale, and trading of crypto assets by our customers. Transaction revenue is based on transaction fees that are either a flat fee or a percentage of the value of each transaction. For our consumer trading product, we also charge a spread to ensure that we are able to settle purchases and sales at the prices we quote to customers. We also generate a large portion of total revenue from our subscription and services, and such revenue has grown over time, primarily due to growth in stablecoin revenue in connection with payment stablecoins. Declines in the volume of crypto asset transactions, the price of crypto assets, or market liquidity for crypto assets generally may result in lower total revenue to us.
The price of crypto assets and associated demand for buying, selling, and trading crypto assets have historically been subject to significant volatility. If the price and transaction volume of crypto assets decline in the future, our ability to generate revenue may suffer and customer demand for our products and services may decline, which could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition and cause the price of our Class A common stock to decline. The price and transaction volume of any crypto asset is subject to significant uncertainty and volatility, depending on a number of factors, including:
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• market conditions of, and overall sentiment towards, crypto assets, including, but not limited to, as a result of actions taken by or developments of other companies in our industry;
• changes in liquidity, market-making volume, and trading activities;
• trading activities on other crypto platforms worldwide, many of which may be unregulated, and may include manipulative activities;
• investment and trading activities of highly active consumer and institutional users, speculators, miners, and investors;
• the speed and rate at which crypto is able to gain adoption as a medium of exchange, utility, store of value, consumptive asset, security instrument, or other financial assets worldwide, if at all;
• decreased user and investor confidence in crypto assets and crypto platforms;
• negative publicity and events relating to the onchain economy;
• unpredictable social media coverage or “trending” of, or other rumors and market speculation regarding, crypto assets;
• the ability for crypto assets to meet user and investor demands;
• the functionality and utility of crypto assets and their associated ecosystems and networks, including crypto assets designed for use in various applications;
• consumer preferences and perceived value of crypto assets and crypto asset markets;
• increased competition from other payment services or other crypto assets that may exhibit better speed, security, scalability, or other characteristics;
• adverse legal proceedings or regulatory enforcement actions, judgments, or settlements impacting industry participants;
• regulatory or legislative changes, scrutiny and updates affecting the onchain economy;
• the characterization of crypto assets under the laws of various jurisdictions around the world;
• the adoption of unfavorable taxation policies on crypto asset investments by governmental entities;
• the maintenance, troubleshooting, and development of the blockchain networks underlying crypto assets, including by miners, validators, and developers worldwide;
• the ability for crypto networks to attract and retain miners or validators to secure and confirm transactions accurately and efficiently;
• legal and regulatory changes affecting the operations of miners and validators of blockchain networks, including limitations, and prohibitions on mining activities, or new legislative or regulatory requirements as a result of growing environmental concerns around the use of energy in Bitcoin and other proof-of-work mining activities;
• ongoing technological viability and security of crypto assets and their associated smart contracts, applications and networks, including vulnerabilities against hacks and scalability;
• speed and fees associated with processing crypto asset transactions, including on the underlying blockchain networks and on crypto platforms;
• financial strength of market participants;
• the availability and cost of funding and capital;
• the liquidity and credit risk of other crypto platforms and other participants of the onchain economy;
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• interruptions or temporary suspensions or other compulsory restrictions in products or services from or failures of major crypto platforms;
• availability of an active derivatives market for various crypto assets;
• availability of banking and payment services to support crypto-related projects;
• instability in the global banking system and the level of interest rates and inflation;
• monetary policies of governments, trade restrictions, and fiat currency devaluations; and
• national and international economic and political conditions.
There is no assurance that any supported crypto asset will maintain its value or that there will be meaningful levels of trading activities. In the event that the price of crypto assets or the demand for trading crypto assets decline, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected and the price of our Class A common stock could decline.
Our net revenue may be concentrated in a limited number of areas. Within transaction revenue and subscription and services revenue, a meaningful concentration is from transactions in Bitcoin and Ethereum and stablecoin revenue in connection with payment stablecoins, respectively. If revenue from these areas declines and is not replaced by new demand for crypto assets or other products and services, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
While we support a diverse portfolio of crypto assets for trading, staking and custody, our net revenue is concentrated in a limited number of areas, such as transactions in Bitcoin and Ethereum for transaction revenue and stablecoin revenue in connection with payment stablecoins for subscription and services revenue. For the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, we derived a meaningful amount of our net revenue from transaction fees generated in connection with the trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum; these trading pairs drove approximately 45% and 46% of total Trading Volume on our platform during these periods, respectively. In addition to the factors impacting the broader onchain economy described in this section, our revenue may be adversely affected if the markets for Bitcoin and Ethereum deteriorate or if their prices decline, including as a result of the following factors:
• the reduction in blockchain transaction fees of Bitcoin, including block reward halving events, which are events that occur after a specific period of time and reduce the block reward earned by miners;
• public sentiment related to the actual or perceived environmental impact of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and related activities, including environmental concerns raised by private individuals and governmental actors related to the energy resources consumed in the Bitcoin mining process;
• disruptions, hacks, splits in the underlying networks also known as “forks,” attacks by malicious actors who control a significant portion of the networks’ hash rate such as double spend or 51% attacks, or other similar incidents affecting the Bitcoin or Ethereum blockchain networks;
• hard “forks” resulting in the creation of and divergence into multiple separate networks, such as Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic;
• informal governance led by Bitcoin and Ethereum’s core developers that lead to revisions to the underlying source code or inactions that prevent network scaling, and which evolve over time largely based on self-determined participation, which may result in new changes or updates that affect their speed, security, usability, or value;
• the ability for Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain networks to resolve significant scaling challenges and increase the volume and speed of transactions;
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• the ability to attract and retain customers and developers to use Bitcoin and Ethereum for payment, store of value, unit of accounting, and other intended uses and the absence of another supported crypto asset to attract and retain developers and customers for the same;
• transaction congestion and fees associated with processing transactions on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks and the absence of another supported crypto asset to replace these transactions;
• the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins;
• negative perception of Bitcoin or Ethereum;
• developments in mathematics and technology, including in digital computing, algebraic geometry, and quantum computing that could result or be perceived to result in the cryptography being used by Bitcoin and Ethereum becoming insecure or ineffective;
• adverse legal proceedings or regulatory enforcement actions, judgments, or settlements impacting industry participants;
• regulatory, legislative or other compulsory or informal restrictions or limitations on Bitcoin or Ethereum lending, mining or staking activities;
• liquidity and credit risk issues experienced by other crypto platforms and other participants of the onchain economy; and
• laws and regulations affecting the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks or access to these networks, including a determination that either Bitcoin or Ethereum constitutes a controlled or otherwise regulated financial instrument under the laws of any jurisdiction.
Our subscription and services revenue has grown over time to represent a more meaningful amount of our revenue, primarily due to growth in stablecoin revenue received in connection with payment stablecoins. Such revenue depends on a variety of factors, including demand for our subscription and services offerings, demand for payment stablecoins, the overall payment stablecoin market capitalization, the mix of payment stablecoin balances held in Coinbase products as compared to that held off-platform, interest rates, and our ongoing relationships with third parties, such as Circle. If such factors are negatively impacted, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We have in the past, and may in the future, enter into partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures, or strategic alliances with third parties. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining strategic relationships with these third parties or if these third parties fail to deliver certain operational services, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We have in the past, and may in the future, enter into partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures, or strategic alliances with third parties in connection with the development, operation, and enhancement of our platform and products and the provision of our services. For example, Circle provides us with creation and redemption services for USDC, including the operational capabilities required for our USDC customer-facing services. If Circle fails to provide certain operational services, our ability to maintain our current level of offerings and customer experience for USDC could be harmed and interest or confidence in USDC could be impacted. Identifying strategic relationships with third parties and negotiating and documenting relationships with them may be time-consuming and complex and may distract management. Moreover, we may be delayed, or not be successful, in achieving the objectives that we anticipate as a result of such strategic relationships. In evaluating counterparties in connection with partnerships, collaborations, joint ventures or strategic , we consider a wide range of economic, legal and regulatory criteria depending on the nature of such relationship, including the counterparties’ reputation, operating results and financial condition, operational ability to our and our customers’ needs in a timely manner, and reliability of systems, certifications costs to us or to our
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customers, and licensure and compliance status. Despite this evaluation, third parties may still not meet our or our customers’ needs which may adversely affect our ability to deliver products and services to customers, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Counterparties to any strategic relationship may have economic or business interests or goals that are, or that may become, inconsistent with our business interests or goals, and may subject us to additional risks to the extent any such third party becomes the subject of negative publicity, faces its own litigation or regulatory challenges, or faces other adverse circumstances. Conflicts may arise with our strategic partners, such as the interpretation of significant terms under any agreement, which may result in litigation or arbitration which would increase our expenses and divert the attention of our management. If we are in establishing or maintaining strategic relationships with third parties, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenue could be and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
Interest rate fluctuations could negatively impact us.
The level of prevailing short-term interest rates affects our profitability because we derive a large portion of our revenue from interest earned on funds deposited with us by our customers which we hold on their behalf in custodial accounts at financial institutions and from stablecoin revenue, which is derived from interest earned on payment stablecoins, such as USDC reserve balances, as well as from interest earned on cash and other cash equivalents. Higher interest rates increase the amount of interest and finance fee income and stablecoin revenue earned from these activities. When short-term interest rates decline, our revenue derived from interest correspondingly declines. Further, because stablecoin revenue from payment stablecoins has become an increased portion of our subscription and services revenue, if interest rates were to significantly decline, our net revenue could decline. Conversely, when interest rates increase, investors may choose to shift their asset allocations, which could negatively impact our stock price or the onchain economy more generally.
The future development and growth of crypto is subject to a variety of factors that are difficult to predict and evaluate. If crypto does not grow as we expect, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Crypto assets built on blockchain technology were only introduced in 2008 and remain in the early stages of development. In addition, different crypto assets are designed for different purposes. Bitcoin, for instance, was designed to serve as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, while Ethereum was designed to be a smart contract and decentralized application platform. Many other crypto networks, ranging from cloud computing to tokenized securities networks, have only recently been established. The further growth and development of any crypto assets and their underlying networks and other cryptographic and algorithmic protocols governing the creation, transfer, and usage of crypto assets represent a new and evolving paradigm that is subject to a variety of factors that are difficult to evaluate, including:
• many crypto networks have limited operating histories, have not been validated in production, and are still in the process of developing and making significant decisions that will affect the design, supply, issuance, functionality, and governance of their respective crypto assets and underlying blockchain networks, any of which could adversely affect their respective crypto assets;
• many crypto networks are in the process of implementing software upgrades and other changes to their protocols, which could introduce bugs, security risks, or adversely affect the respective crypto networks;
• several large networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, are developing new features to address fundamental speed, scalability, and energy usage issues. If these issues are not successfully addressed, or if these networks do not achieve widespread adoption, it could adversely affect the underlying crypto assets;
• security issues, bugs, and software errors have been identified with many crypto assets and their underlying blockchain networks, some of which have been exploited by malicious actors. There
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are also inherent security weaknesses in some crypto assets, such as when creators of certain crypto networks use procedures that could allow hackers to counterfeit tokens. Any weaknesses identified with a crypto asset could adversely affect its price, security, liquidity, and adoption rate. If one or more malicious actors obtains a majority of the compute or staking power on a crypto network, as has happened in the past, it may be able to engage in illicit activity, which could cause financial losses to holders, damage the network’s reputation and security, and adversely affect its value;
• the development of new technologies for mining, such as improved application-specific integrated circuits (commonly referred to as ASICs), or changes in industry patterns, such as the consolidation of mining power in a small number of large mining farms, could reduce the security of blockchain networks, lead to increased liquid supply of crypto assets, and reduce a crypto asset’s price and attractiveness;
• if rewards and transaction fees for miners or validators on any particular crypto network are not sufficiently high to attract and retain miners or validators, a crypto network’s security and speed may be adversely affected, increasing the likelihood of a malicious attack;
• crypto networks may have consolidated points of failure (such as concentrated ownership or an “admin key”), allowing a small group of holders to have significant unilateral control and influence over key decisions related to their crypto networks, such as governance decisions and protocol changes, as well as the market price of such crypto assets;
• the governance of many decentralized blockchain networks, including L2 blockchains like Base Chain (formerly Base), is by voluntary consensus and open competition, and many developers are not directly compensated for their contributions. As a result, there may be a lack of consensus or clarity on the governance of any particular crypto network, a lack of incentives for developers to maintain or develop the network, and other unforeseen issues, any of which could result in unexpected or undesirable errors, bugs, or changes, or stymie such network’s utility and ability to respond to challenges and grow; and
• many crypto networks are in the early stages of developing partnerships and collaborations, any or all of which may not succeed and adversely affect the usability and adoption of the respective crypto assets.
Various other technical issues have also been uncovered from time to time that resulted in disabled functionalities, exposure of certain users’ personal information, theft of users’ assets, and other negative consequences, and which required resolution with the attention and efforts of their global miner, user, and development communities. If any such risks or other risks materialize, and in particular if they are not resolved, the development and growth of crypto may be significantly affected and, as a result, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Cyberattacks and security breaches of our platform, or those impacting our customers or third parties, could adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business involves the collection, storage, processing, and transmission of confidential information, customer, employee, service provider, and other personal data, as well as information required to access customer assets. We have built our reputation on the premise that our platform offers customers a secure way to purchase, store, and transact in crypto assets. As a result, any actual or perceived security breach of us or our third-party partners may:
• harm our reputation and brand;
• result in our systems or services being unavailable and interrupt our operations;
• result in improper disclosure of data and violations of applicable privacy and data protection laws;
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• result in significant regulatory scrutiny, investigations, fines, penalties, and other legal, regulatory, and financial exposure;
• cause us to incur significant remediation costs;
• lead to theft or irretrievable loss of our or our customers’ fiat currencies or crypto assets;
• reduce customer confidence in, or decrease customer use of, our products and services;
• divert the attention of management from the operation of our business;
• result in significant compensation or contractual penalties payable by us to our customers or third parties as a result of losses to them or claims by them; and
• adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
For example, as previously disclosed on a Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the SEC on May 15, 2025, a threat actor improperly obtained information about certain customer accounts and internal documentation, and used that information for social-engineering attempts. No passwords or private keys were compromised as a result of this incident. We continue to face risks related to this incident, including harm to our reputation, governmental investigations and regulatory scrutiny, and ongoing litigation.
Further, any actual or perceived breach or cybersecurity attack directed at other financial institutions or crypto companies, whether or not we are directly impacted, could lead to a general loss of customer confidence or in the use of technology to conduct financial transactions, which could negatively impact us, including the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures and technology infrastructure.
An increasing number of organizations, including large merchants, businesses, technology companies, and financial institutions, as well as government institutions, have disclosed breaches of their information security systems, some of which have involved sophisticated and highly targeted attacks, including on their websites, mobile applications, and infrastructure.
Attacks upon systems across a variety of industries, including the crypto industry, are increasing in their frequency, persistence, magnitude, and sophistication, and, in many cases, are being conducted by sophisticated, well-funded, and organized groups and individuals, including state actors. The techniques used to obtain unauthorized, improper, or illegal access to systems and information (including customers’ personal data and crypto assets), disable or degrade services, or sabotage systems are constantly evolving, may be difficult to detect quickly, and often are not recognized or detected until after they have been launched against a target. These attacks may occur on our systems or those of our third-party service providers or partners. Certain types of cyberattacks could harm us even if our systems are left undisturbed. For example, attacks may be designed to deceive employees and service providers into releasing control of our systems to a hacker, while others may aim to introduce computer viruses or malware into our systems with a view to stealing confidential or proprietary data. Additionally, certain are designed to remain dormant or undetectable until launched a target, and we may not be to implement adequate preventative measures.
Although we have developed systems and processes designed to protect the data we manage, prevent data loss and other security breaches, effectively respond to known and potential risks, and expect to continue to expend significant resources to bolster these protections, there can be no assurance that these security measures will provide absolute security or prevent breaches or attacks. We have experienced from time to time, and may experience in the future, breaches of our security measures due to human error, malfeasance, insider threats, system errors or vulnerabilities, or other irregularities. Unauthorized parties have attempted, and we expect that they will continue to attempt, to gain access to our systems and facilities, as well as those of our customers, partners, and third-party service providers, through various means, including hacking, social engineering, phishing, and attempting to induce individuals (including employees, service providers, and our customers) into usernames, passwords, payment card information, or other sensitive information, which may in turn be
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used to access our information technology systems and customers’ crypto assets. As we grow our offering of products and services, including options and perpetual swaps, we face increased exposure to cyberattacks through third parties. Threats can come from a variety of sources, including criminal hackers, hacktivists, state-sponsored intrusions, industrial espionage, and insiders. Certain threat actors may be supported by significant financial and technological resources, making them even more sophisticated and difficult to detect. We may also acquire other companies that expose us to unexpected security risks or increase costs to improve the security posture of the acquired company. Further, there has been an increase in such threat actor activities as a result of the increased prevalence of hybrid and remote working arrangements in recent years. As a result, our costs and the resources we devote to protecting against these advanced threats and their consequences may continue to increase over time.
Although we maintain insurance coverage, it may be insufficient to protect us against all losses and costs stemming from security breaches, cyberattacks, and other types of unlawful activity, or any resulting disruptions or data theft and loss from such events. Outages and disruptions of our platform, including any caused by cyberattacks, may harm our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are subject to an extensive, highly-evolving and uncertain regulatory landscape and any adverse changes to, or our failure to comply with, any laws and regulations could adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business is subject to extensive laws, rules, regulations, policies, orders, determinations, directives, treaties, and legal and regulatory interpretations and guidance in the markets in which we operate, including those governing financial services and banking, federal government contractors, trust companies, securities, derivative transactions and markets, broker-dealers and alternative trading systems (“ATS”), commodities, credit, crypto asset custody, exchange, and transfer, cross-border and domestic money and crypto asset transmission, commercial lending, usury, foreign currency exchange, privacy, data governance, data protection, cybersecurity, fraud detection, payment services (including payment processing and settlement services), consumer protection, escheatment, antitrust and competition, bankruptcy, tax, anti-bribery, economic and trade sanctions, anti-money laundering, and counter-terrorist financing. Many of these legal and regulatory regimes were adopted prior to the advent of the internet, mobile technologies, crypto assets, generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) and related technologies. As a result, some applicable laws and regulations do not contemplate or address unique issues associated with the onchain economy, are subject to significant uncertainty, and vary widely across U.S. federal, state, and local and international jurisdictions. These legal and regulatory regimes, including the laws, rules, and regulations thereunder, evolve frequently and may be modified, interpreted, and applied in an manner from one jurisdiction to another, and may with one another. Moreover, the complexity and evolving nature of our business and the significant uncertainty surrounding the regulation of the onchain economy requires us to exercise our judgment as to whether certain laws, rules, and regulations apply to us, and it is possible that governmental bodies and regulators may with our conclusions. To the extent we have not complied with such laws, rules, and regulations, we could be subject to significant , of licenses, on or temporary or permanent of our products and services, reputational , and other regulatory consequences, each of which may be significant and could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Governmental and regulatory bodies, including in the United States, may introduce new policies, laws, and regulations relating to crypto assets and the onchain economy generally, and crypto asset platforms in particular. Other companies’ failures of risk management and other control functions could contribute to stricter oversight of crypto asset platforms and the onchain economy. Furthermore, new interpretations of existing laws and regulations may be issued by such bodies or the judiciary, which may adversely impact the development of the onchain economy as a whole and our legal and regulatory status in particular by changing how we operate our business, how our products and services are regulated, and what products or services we and our competitors can offer, requiring changes to our compliance and risk mitigation measures, imposing new licensing requirements, or imposing a total ban on certain crypto
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asset transactions, as has occurred in certain jurisdictions in the past. For example, in the past few years, regulatory developments in the area of anti-money laundering, recordkeeping and prudential regulatory compliance include the Travel Rule requiring transmission of information with crypto transfers. This and similar regulations increase our compliance costs, may require operational changes, and could subject us to sanctions for technical violations.
Moreover, we offer and may in the future offer products and services that may depend on novel forms of customer engagement and interaction delivered via blockchain protocols, particularly as it relates to management of token transaction smart contracts, liquid staking, asset tracking, or other applications. We may also offer products and services whose functionality or value depends on our ability to develop, integrate, or otherwise interact with such applications within the bounds of our legal and compliance obligations. The legal and regulatory landscape for such products, including the law governing the rights and obligations between and among smart contract developers and users and the extent to which such relationships entail regulated activity are fluid. Our interaction with those applications, and the interaction of other blockchain users with any smart contracts or assets we may generate or control, could present legal, operational, reputational, and regulatory risks for our business.
We may be further subject to administrative sanctions for technical violations or customer attrition if the user experience suffers as a result. As another example, the extension of anti-money laundering requirements to certain crypto-related activities by the European Union’s Fifth Money Laundering Directive has increased the regulatory compliance burden for our business in Europe and, as a result of the fragmented approach to the implementation of its provisions, resulted in distinct and divergent national licensing and registration regimes for us in different E.U. member states. Additionally, MiCA introduces a comprehensive authorization and compliance regime for crypto asset service providers and a disclosure regime for the issuers of certain crypto assets, which will impact our operations in the European Union, including through localization requirements, due to the obligations associated with our MiCA license (obtained in June 2025).
Because we have offered and will continue to offer a variety of innovative products and services to our customers, many of our offerings are subject to significant regulatory uncertainty and we from time to time face regulatory inquiries regarding our current and planned products. For instance, we purchase USDC, a stablecoin redeemable on a one-to-one basis for U.S. dollars, from Circle and sell it to customers on our platform. The regulatory treatment of fiat-backed stablecoins is highly uncertain and has drawn significant attention from legislative and regulatory bodies around the world. The issuance, purchase, and sale of such stablecoins may implicate a variety of banking, deposit, money transmission, prepaid access and stored value, anti-money laundering, commodities, securities, sanctions, and other laws and regulations in the United States and in other jurisdictions. There are substantial uncertainties as to how these requirements would apply in practice, and we may face substantial compliance costs to operationalize and comply with these rules. In July 2025, the United States enacted the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the “GENIUS Act”), which establishes a federal regulatory framework for “payment stablecoins” and their issuers and custodians. As a distributor and ecosystem partner of stablecoins, Coinbase may directly and indirectly be subject to these requirements. Additionally, our event contract products, which allow customers to trade on the outcome of future events, are subject to complex and evolving legal and regulatory frameworks and interpretation. Event contracts, whether offered by us or others, have drawn from federal and state regulators and resulted in that we are party to as well as other companies that offer event contracts. Regulators and authorities in various jurisdictions may assert that these offerings constitute gambling, sports betting, or other regulated activities under state or local laws, rather than federally regulated financial instruments. For example, courts may conclude that state laws attempting to prevent the trading of CFTC-regulated sports-related event contracts are not preempted by the CEA, or that outcome based event contracts are not “swaps” falling within the jurisdiction of the CFTC, which could impact our ability to offer certain event contracts in one or more states and could lead to and regulatory actions us.
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Certain products and services offered by us that we believe are not subject to regulatory oversight, or are only subject to certain regulatory regimes, such as the Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet), a standalone mobile application that allows customers to manage their own private keys and store their crypto assets directly on their mobile devices, may cause us to be deemed to be engaged in a form of regulated activity for which licensure is required or cause us to become subject to new and additional forms of regulatory oversight. We also offer various staking, rewards, and lending products, all of which are subject to significant regulatory uncertainty, and could implicate a variety of laws and regulations worldwide. For example, there is regulatory uncertainty regarding the status of our staking, lending, rewards, and other yield-generating activities under the U.S. federal and state securities laws. While we have implemented policies and procedures, including geofencing for certain products and services, designed to help monitor for and ensure compliance with existing and new laws and regulations, there can be no assurance that we and our employees, contractors, and agents will not violate or otherwise fail to comply with such laws and regulations. To the extent that we or our employees, contractors, or agents are deemed or to have or to comply with any laws or regulations, including related interpretations, orders, determinations, directives, or guidance, we or they could be subject to a litany of civil, , and administrative , , orders and actions, including being required to or the offering of certain products and services. Moreover, to the extent our customers nevertheless access our platform, products or services outside of jurisdictions where we have obtained required governmental licenses and authorization, we could similarly be subject to a variety of civil, , and administrative , , orders and actions as a result of such activity.
Due to our business activities, we are subject to ongoing examinations, oversight, and reviews and currently are, and expect in the future, to be subject to investigations and inquiries, by U.S. federal and state regulators and foreign financial service regulators, many of which have broad discretion to audit and examine our business. We are periodically subject to audits and examinations by these regulatory authorities. As a result of findings from these audits and examinations, regulators have required, are requiring, and may in the future require us to take certain actions, including amending, updating, or revising our compliance measures from time to time, limiting the kinds of customers that we provide services to, changing, terminating, or delaying our licenses and the introduction of our existing or new product and services, and undertaking further external audit or being subject to further regulatory scrutiny, including investigations and inquiries. We have received, and may in the future receive, examination reports citing violations of rules and regulations, inadequacies in existing compliance programs, and requiring us to enhance certain practices with respect to our compliance program, including due diligence, monitoring, training, reporting, and recordkeeping. Implementing appropriate measures to properly remediate these examination findings may require us to incur significant costs, and if we to properly remediate any of these examination findings, we could face civil , significant , awards, removal of certain employees including members of our executive team, barring of certain employees from participating in our business in whole or in part, of existing licenses, on existing and new products and services, reputational , impact to our existing relationships with regulators, exposure to liability, or other regulatory consequences. Further, we believe increasingly strict legal and regulatory requirements and additional regulatory and enforcement, any of which could occur or intensify, may continue to result in changes to our business, as well as increased costs, and supervision and examination for ourselves, our agents, and service providers. Moreover, new laws, regulations, or interpretations may result in additional , regulatory , and enforcement or other actions, including or us from offering certain products or services offered by our competitors or could impact how we offer such products and services. changes to, or our to comply with, any laws and regulations have had, and may continue to have, an effect on our reputation and brand and our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We operate in a highly competitive industry and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected if we are unable to compete effectively.
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Our industry is highly innovative, rapidly evolving, and characterized by healthy competition, experimentation, changing customer needs, frequent introductions of new products and services, and subject to uncertain and evolving industry and regulatory requirements. We expect competition to intensify in the future as existing and new competitors introduce new products or enhance existing products. We face significant competition from a variety of companies around the world, ranging from crypto-native companies, including decentralized exchanges, to large traditional financial services incumbents and financial technology providers. Our main competition falls into the following categories:
• traditional financial technology and brokerage firms that have entered the crypto asset market in recent years and offer overlapping features targeted at our customers;
• companies focused on the crypto asset market, some of whom adhere to local regulations and directly compete with our platform, and others who choose to operate outside of local rules and regulations or in jurisdictions with less stringent local rules and regulations and are potentially able to more quickly adapt to trends, support a greater number of crypto assets, and develop new crypto-based products and services due to a different standard of regulatory scrutiny;
• crypto-focused companies and traditional financial incumbents that offer point or siloed solutions specifically targeted at institutional customers;
• decentralized and noncustodial platforms; and
• stablecoins, other than USDC, and fiat currencies globally.
Historically, a major source of competition has been from companies, in particular those located outside the United States, who at times are and may in the future be subject to significantly less stringent regulatory and compliance requirements in their local jurisdictions. Their business models rely on being unregulated or only regulated in a small number of lower compliance jurisdictions, whilst also offering their products in highly regulated jurisdictions, including the United States, without necessarily complying with the relevant regulatory requirements in such jurisdictions.
Given the uneven enforcement by United States and foreign regulators, many of these competitors have been able to operate from offshore while offering large numbers of products and services to consumers, including in the United States, Europe, and other highly regulated jurisdictions, without complying with the relevant licensing and other requirements in these jurisdictions, and historically without penalty. Due to our regulated status in several jurisdictions and our commitment to legal and regulatory compliance, we have not been able to offer many popular products and services, including products and services that our unregulated or less regulated competitors are able to offer.
We also have expended significant managerial, operational, and compliance costs to comply with laws and regulations applicable to us in the jurisdictions in which we operate, and expect to continue to incur significant costs to comply with these requirements, which these unregulated or less regulated competitors have not had to incur.
Our competitors have made significant investments in research and development, and we expect these companies to continue to develop similar or superior products and technologies that compete with our products. Further, more traditional financial and non-financial services businesses may choose to offer crypto-based services in the future as the industry gains adoption and barriers to entry lower. As regulations and compliance requirements in the United States become clearer, we may face increased competition from companies based in the United States. Our current and potential competitors may establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their resources.
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Our existing competitors have, and our potential competitors are expected to have, competitive advantages over us, such as:
• the ability to trade crypto assets and offer products and services, including non-crypto financial products and services, that we do not support or offer on our platform (due to constraints from regulatory authorities, our financial institution partners, and other factors) such as tokens that constitute securities or derivative instruments under U.S. or foreign laws;
• greater name recognition, longer operating histories, larger customer bases, and larger market shares;
• larger sales and marketing budgets and organizations;
• more established marketing, banking, and compliance relationships;
• greater customer support resources;
• greater resources to make acquisitions;
• lower labor, compliance, risk mitigation, and research and development costs;
• larger and more mature intellectual property portfolios;
• greater number of applicable licenses or similar authorizations;
• established core business models outside of the trading of crypto assets, allowing them to operate on lesser margins or at a loss;
• operations in certain jurisdictions with lower compliance costs and greater flexibility to explore new product offerings; and
• substantially greater financial, technical, and other resources.
If we are unable to compete successfully, or if competing successfully requires us to take costly actions in response to the actions of our competitors, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We compete against a growing number of decentralized and noncustodial platforms and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected if we fail to compete effectively.
We compete against an increasing number of decentralized and noncustodial platforms. On these platforms, users can interact directly with a market-making smart contract or onchain trading mechanism to earn crypto assets or to exchange one type of crypto asset for another without any centralized intermediary. We have seen increased interest in certain decentralized platforms with transaction volumes rivaling our own platform on multiple occasions, and expect interest in decentralized and noncustodial platforms to grow further as the industry develops. If the demand for decentralized platforms grows and we are unable to compete with these decentralized and noncustodial platforms, including, for example, if we fail to achieve sufficient decentralization and scaling of Base Chain (formerly Base) as an L2, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
As we continue to expand and localize our international activities, our obligations to comply with the laws, rules, regulations, and policies of a variety of jurisdictions will increase and we may be subject to inquiries, investigations, and enforcement actions by U.S. and non-U.S. regulators and governmental authorities, including those related to sanctions, export control, and anti-money laundering.
As we expand and localize our international activities, we have become increasingly obligated to comply with the laws, rules, regulations, policies, and legal interpretations of both the jurisdictions in which we operate and those into which we offer services on a cross-border basis. For instance, financial regulators outside the United States have increased their scrutiny of crypto asset exchanges over time,
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such as by requiring crypto asset exchanges operating in their local jurisdictions to be regulated and licensed under local laws. Moreover, laws regulating financial services, the internet, mobile technologies, crypto, AI, and related technologies outside of the United States are highly evolving, extensive and often impose different, more specific, or even conflicting obligations on us, as well as broader liability. In addition, we are required to comply with laws and regulations related to economic sanctions and export controls enforced by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, and U.S. anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws and regulations, enforced by FinCEN and certain state financial services regulators. U.S. sanctions and export control laws and regulations generally restrict dealings by persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction with certain jurisdictions that are the target of comprehensive embargoes, as well as with persons, entities, and governments identified on certain prohibited party lists. Moreover, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States, the E.U., the United Kingdom, and other jurisdictions have imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia and Belarus and persons and entities associated with Russia and Belarus. There can be no certainty regarding whether such governments or other governments will impose additional sanctions, or other economic or military measures Russia or Belarus. We have continued to engage in activity in Russia and Belarus and with customers associated with these countries. At the same time, we have implemented additional processes and procedures to comply with these new sanctions. However, our activity in Russia and Belarus and with these customers associated with these countries subjects us to further exposure to sanctions as they are released. We have an OFAC compliance program in place that includes monitoring of IP addresses to identify prohibited jurisdictions and of blockchain addresses that have either been identified by OFAC as prohibited or that otherwise are believed by us to be associated with prohibited persons or jurisdictions. Nonetheless, there can be no guarantee that our compliance program will prevent transactions with particular persons or addresses or prevent every potential of OFAC sanctions. From time to time, we have submitted voluntary disclosures to OFAC or responded to administrative from OFAC. To date, none of those proceedings has resulted in a monetary or finding of . Any present or future government inquiries relating to sanctions could result in consequences for us, including costs related to government , financial , and to our reputation. The impact on us related to such matters could be substantial. Although we have implemented controls, and are working to implement additional controls and screening tools designed to prevent sanctions , there is no guarantee that we will not provide access to our products and services to sanctioned parties or jurisdictions in the future.
Regulators worldwide frequently study each other’s approaches to the regulation of our industry. Consequently, developments in any jurisdiction may influence other jurisdictions. New developments in one jurisdiction may be extended to additional services and other jurisdictions. As a result, the risks created by any new law or regulation in one jurisdiction are magnified by the potential that they may be replicated, affecting our business in another place or involving another service. Conversely, if regulations diverge worldwide, we may face difficulty adjusting our products, services, and other aspects of our business with the same effect. These risks are heightened as we face increased competitive pressure
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from other similarly situated businesses that engage in regulatory arbitrage to avoid the compliance costs associated with regulatory changes.
The complexity of U.S. federal and state and international regulatory and enforcement regimes, coupled with the global scope of our operations and the evolving global regulatory environment, could result in a single event prompting a large number of overlapping investigations and legal and regulatory proceedings by multiple government authorities in different jurisdictions. Any of the foregoing could, individually or in the aggregate, harm our reputation, damage our brand, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Due to the uncertain application of existing laws and regulations, it may be that, despite our regulatory and legal analysis concluding that certain products and services are currently unregulated, such products or services may indeed be subject to financial regulation, licensing, or authorization obligations that we have not obtained or with which we have not complied. As a result, we are at a heightened risk of enforcement action, litigation, regulatory, and legal scrutiny which could lead to sanctions, cease and desist orders, or other penalties and which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are, and may continue to be, subject to litigation, including individual and class action lawsuits, as well as investigations and enforcement actions by regulators and governmental authorities. These matters are often expensive and time consuming, and, if resolved adversely, could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We have been, currently are, and may from time to time become subject to claims, arbitrations, individual and class action lawsuits with respect to a variety of matters, including employment, consumer protection, intellectual property, privacy, information security, data protection, advertising, and securities. In addition, we have been, currently are, and may from time to time become subject to, government and regulatory investigations, inquiries, actions or requests, other proceedings and enforcement actions alleging violations of laws, rules, and regulations, both foreign and domestic. For a description of our material litigation, regulatory investigations, and other proceedings, see Note 21. Commitments and Contingencies of the Notes to our Consolidated Financial Statements included in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The scope, determination, and impact of claims, lawsuits, government and regulatory investigations, enforcement actions, disputes, and proceedings to which we are subject cannot be predicted with certainty and may result in:
• substantial payments to satisfy judgments, fines, or penalties;
• substantial outside counsel, advisor, and consultant fees and costs;
• substantial administrative costs, including arbitration fees;
• additional compliance and licensure requirements;
• loss or non-renewal of existing licenses or authorizations, or prohibition from or delays in obtaining additional licenses or authorizations, required for our business;
• loss of productivity and high demands on employee time;
• criminal sanctions or consent decrees;
• termination of certain employees, including members of our executive team;
• barring of certain employees from participating in our business in whole or in part;
• orders that restrict our business or prevent us from offering certain products or services;
• changes to our business model and practices;
• delays to planned transactions, product launches or improvements; and
• damage to our brand and reputation.
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Because of our large customer base, actions against us may claim large monetary damages, even if the alleged per-customer harm is small or non-existent. From time to time, we receive letters alleging claims on behalf of our users. Due to our large customer base, the ongoing defense and resolution or settlement of these alleged claims could be material and we may incur significant expenses associated with arbitrating or litigating the claims. Moreover, to the extent that a deterioration of the crypto asset market occurs, large platforms like us may become subject to or the target of increased litigation and additional government and regulatory scrutiny. Regardless of the outcome, any such matters could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition because of legal costs, of management resources, reputational , and other factors.
If we cannot keep pace with rapid industry changes to provide new and innovative products and services, the use of our products and services, and consequently our net revenue, could decline, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our industry has been characterized by many rapid, significant, and disruptive products and services in recent years. These include decentralized applications, DeFi, yield farming, NFTs, play-to-earn games, lending, staking and re-staking, token wrapping, network and governance tokens, innovative programs to attract customers such as transaction fee mining programs, initiatives to attract traders such as trading competitions, airdrops and giveaways, staking reward programs, “layer 2” blockchain networks, smart contract wallets, and novel cryptocurrency fundraising and distribution schemes, such as “initial exchange offerings.” We expect new services and technologies to continue to emerge and evolve, which may be superior to, or render obsolete, the products and services that we currently provide. For example, decentralized networks and other disruptive technologies such as generative AI may fundamentally alter the use of our products or services in unpredictable ways. We cannot predict the effects of new services and technologies on our business. However, our ability to grow our customer base and net revenue will depend heavily on our ability to innovate and create new products and services, both independently and in conjunction with third-party developers. In particular, developing and incorporating new products and services into our business may require substantial expenditures, take considerable time, and ultimately may not be . Any new products or services could to attract customers, generate revenue, or perform or integrate well with third-party applications and platforms. In addition, our ability to adapt and compete with new products and services may be by regulatory requirements and general uncertainty in the law, constraints by our financial institution partners and payment processors, third-party intellectual property rights, or other factors. Moreover, we must continue to our technical infrastructure and other technology offerings to remain competitive and maintain a platform that has the required functionality, performance, capacity, security, and speed to attract and retain customers, including large, institutional, high-frequency and high-volume traders. As a result, we expect to incur significant costs and expenses to develop and upgrade our technical infrastructure to meet the evolving needs of the industry. Our will depend on our ability to develop, scale, and incorporate new offerings and adapt to technological changes and evolving industry practices. If we are to do so in a timely or cost- manner, our ability to compete, to retain existing customers, and to attract new customers may be impacted and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
A particular crypto asset, product or service’s status as a “security” in any relevant jurisdiction is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and if we are unable to properly characterize a crypto asset or product offering, we may be subject to regulatory scrutiny, inquiries, investigations, fines, and other penalties, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
The SEC and its staff have taken evolving positions as to whether a range of crypto assets, products and services fall within the definition of a “security” under the U.S. federal securities laws. Despite the SEC being the principal federal securities law regulator in the United States, whether or not an asset, product, or service is a security or constitutes a securities offering under federal securities laws is ultimately determined by a federal court. The legal test for determining whether any given crypto asset, product, or service is an investment contract security was set forth in the 1946 Supreme Court case SEC
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v. W.J. Howey Co. and whether any given crypto asset, product, or service is a note in the 1990 Supreme Court case Reves v. Ernst & Young . The legal tests for determining whether any given crypto asset, product, or service is a security requires a highly complex, fact-driven analysis. Accordingly, whether any given crypto asset, product or service would be ultimately deemed by a federal court to be a security is uncertain and difficult to predict notwithstanding the conclusions of the SEC or any conclusions we may draw based on our risk-based assessment regarding the likelihood that a particular crypto asset, product or service could be deemed a “security” or “securities offering” under applicable laws. The SEC generally does not provide advance guidance or confirmation on its assessment of the status of any particular crypto asset, product, or service as a security. Furthermore, in our view, statements by the SEC and its staff have appeared contradictory at times. It is also possible that the change in the governing administration and the appointment of new SEC commissioners will substantially impact the approach to enforcement by the SEC and its staff.
The SEC has also brought enforcement actions and entered into settlements with numerous industry participants alleging that certain digital assets are securities. In 2025, the SEC dismissed many of those enforcement actions. These statements, framework and enforcement actions are not rules or regulations of the SEC and are not binding on the SEC. As noted above, whether any given crypto asset, product or service would be ultimately deemed by a federal court to be a security is uncertain and difficult to predict. Moreover, the SEC and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”) and their senior officials have, at times, taken conflicting positions in speeches and enforcement actions as to whether a particular crypto asset is a security or commodity. In January 2025, the SEC launched a crypto task force dedicated to developing a comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets. While newly formed, its goal is to clarify federal securities laws for crypto, recommend practical policies, foster innovation, and protect investors. Furthermore, on November 12, 2025, SEC Chairman Atkins delivered an address at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, in which he highlighted the view that most crypto assets are not securities, and that the SEC would coordinate with the CFTC on a token taxonomy that includes “digital commodities.”
Several foreign jurisdictions have taken a broad-based approach to classifying crypto assets, products and services as “securities,” while other foreign jurisdictions have adopted a narrower approach. As a result, certain crypto assets, products or services may be deemed to be a “security” under the laws of some jurisdictions but not others. Various foreign jurisdictions may, in the future, adopt additional laws, regulations, or directives that affect the characterization of crypto assets, products or services as “securities.”
The classification of a crypto asset, product or service as a security under applicable law has wide-ranging implications for the regulatory obligations that flow from the offer, sale, trading, and clearing, as applicable, of such assets, products or services. For example, a crypto asset, product or service that is a security in the United States may generally only be offered or sold in the United States pursuant to a registration statement filed with the SEC or in an offering that qualifies for an exemption from registration. Persons that effect transactions in crypto assets, products or services that are securities in the United States may be subject to registration with the SEC as a “broker” or “dealer.” Platforms that bring together purchasers and sellers to trade crypto assets that are securities in the United States are generally subject to registration as national securities exchanges, or must qualify for an exemption, such as by being operated by a registered broker-dealer as an ATS in compliance with rules for ATSs. Persons facilitating clearing and settlement of securities may be subject to registration with the SEC as a clearing agency. Foreign jurisdictions may have similar licensing, registration, and qualification requirements.
We have policies and procedures to analyze whether each crypto asset that we seek to facilitate trading on Coinbase Spot Market , as well as our products and services, could be deemed to be a “security” under applicable laws. Our policies and procedures do not constitute a legal standard, but rather represent our company-developed model, which we use to make a risk-based assessment regarding the likelihood that a particular crypto asset, product or service could be deemed a “security” under applicable laws.
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Because Coinbase Spot Market, Coinbase Prime and Coinbase app are not registered or licensed with the SEC or foreign authorities as a broker-dealer, national securities exchange, or ATS (or foreign equivalents), we only permit trading of those crypto assets, and offer products and services, for which we determine there are reasonably strong arguments to conclude that the crypto asset, product or service is not a security. We believe that our process reflects a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis and is reasonably designed to facilitate consistent application of available legal guidance on crypto assets, products and services and to facilitate informed risk-based business judgment. In addition, as we shared in our petition for SEC rulemaking, we remain open to registering or relying on an exemption to facilitate and offer the sale of securities involving crypto assets. We recognize that the application of securities laws to the specific facts and circumstances of crypto assets, products and services may be complex and subject to change, and that a listing determination does not guarantee any conclusion under the U.S. federal securities laws. Regardless of our conclusions, we have been, and could in the future be, subject to legal or regulatory action in the event the SEC or a state or foreign regulatory authority were to assert, or a court were to determine, that a supported crypto asset, product or service offered, sold, or traded on our platform or a product or service that we offer is a “security” under applicable laws. There can be no assurance that we will properly characterize over time any given crypto asset, product or service offering as a security or non-security, or that the SEC, foreign regulatory authority, or a court having final determinative authority on the topic, if the was presented to it, would agree with our assessment. We expect our risk assessment policies and procedures to continuously evolve to take into account case law, legislative developments, facts, and developments in technology.
If an applicable regulatory authority or a court, in either case having final determinative authority on the topic, were to determine that a supported crypto asset, product or service currently offered, sold, or traded on our platform is a security, we would not be able to offer such crypto asset for trading, or product or service on our platform, until we are able to do so in a compliant manner. A determination by the SEC, a state or foreign regulatory authority, or a court that an asset that we currently support for trading on our platform, or product or service that we offer on our platform, constitutes a security may result in us removing that crypto asset from or ceasing to offer that product or service on our platform, and may also result in us determining that it is advisable to remove assets from our platform, or to cease offering products and services on our platform, that have similar characteristics to the asset, product or service that was alleged or determined to be a security. Alternatively, we may determine not to remove a particular crypto asset from Coinbase Spot Market or to continue to offer a product or service on our platform even if the SEC or another regulator alleges that the crypto asset, product or service is a security, pending a final judicial determination as to that crypto asset, product or service’s proper characterization, and the fact that we waited for a final judicial determination would generally not or sanctions us for our having previously made our platform available for trading that crypto asset or offering that product or service on our platform without registering as a national securities exchange or ATS or registering tokens that we may issue, such as our cbETH and cbBTC tokens or our staking services, with the SEC. As such, we could be subject to judicial or administrative sanctions for to offer or sell the crypto asset, product or service in compliance with the registration requirements, or for acting as a broker, dealer, or national securities exchange without appropriate registration. Such an action could result in , and desist orders, as well as civil monetary , , and , liability, and reputational . Customers that traded such supported crypto asset on our platform and trading could also seek to rescind a transaction that we facilitated on the basis that it was conducted in of applicable law, which could subject us to significant liability. We may also be required to facilitating transactions in the supported crypto asset other than via our licensed subsidiaries, which could impact our business, operating results, and financial condition. Additionally, the SEC has brought and may in the future bring enforcement actions other industry participants and their product offerings and services that may cause us to modify or a product offering or service on our platform. If we were to modify or any product offering or service or remove any assets from trading on our platform for any reason, our decision may be with users, may reduce our ability to attract and retain customers (especially if similar products, services or such assets continue to be offered or traded on unregulated exchanges, which includes many of our competitors), and could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
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Further, if Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins or any other supported crypto asset is deemed to be a security under any U.S. federal, state, or foreign jurisdiction, or in a proceeding in a court of law or otherwise, it may have adverse consequences for such supported crypto asset. For instance, all transactions in such supported crypto asset would have to be registered with the SEC or other foreign authority, or conducted in accordance with an exemption from registration, which could severely limit its liquidity, usability and transactability. Moreover, the networks on which such supported crypto assets are utilized may be required to be regulated as securities intermediaries, and subject to applicable rules, which could effectively render the network impracticable for its existing purposes. Further, it could draw negative publicity and a decline in the general acceptance of the crypto asset. Also, it may make it difficult for such supported crypto asset to be traded, cleared, and custodied as compared to other crypto assets that are not considered to be securities. Specifically, even if transactions in such supported crypto asset were registered with the SEC or conducted in accordance with an exemption from registration, the current intermediary-based framework for securities trading, clearance and settlement is not consistent with the operations of the crypto asset market. For example, the SEC has not permitted public permissionless blockchain-based clearance and settlement systems for securities.
We currently rely on third-party service providers for certain aspects of our operations, and any interruptions in services provided by these third parties may impair our ability to support our customers.
We rely on third parties in connection with many aspects of our business, including payment processors, financial institutions, and payment gateways to process transactions; cloud computing services and data centers that provide facilities, infrastructure, smart contract development, website functionality and access, components, and services, including databases and data center facilities and cloud computing; as well as third parties that provide outsourced customer service, compliance support and product development functions, which are critical to our operations. Because we rely on third parties to provide these services and to facilitate certain of our business activities, we face increased operational risks. We do not directly manage the operation of any of these third parties, including their data center facilities that we use. These third parties may be subject to financial, legal, regulatory, and labor issues, cybersecurity incidents, data theft or loss, break-ins, computer viruses or vulnerabilities in their code, denial-of-service attacks, sabotage, acts of vandalism, loss, , or of third-party financial institution relationships, privacy , service , , , and other . They are also to or from human , power , telecommunications , fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, pandemics and similar events. In addition, these third parties may their agreements with us, with our interpretation of contract terms or applicable laws and regulations, to continue or renew these agreements on commercially reasonable terms or at all, or to process transactions or provide other services , take actions that the functionality of our services, impose additional costs or requirements on us or our customers, or give preferential treatment to competitors. There can be no assurance that third parties that provide services to us or to our customers on our behalf will continue to do so on acceptable terms, or at all. If any third parties do not or appropriately provide their services or perform their responsibilities to us or our customers on our behalf, such as if third-party service providers close their data center facilities without adequate notice, are to restore operations and data, to perform as expected, or experience other , we may be to procure alternatives in a timely and manner and on acceptable terms, or at all, and we may be subject to business , or costs to remediate any of the , customer , reputational , legal or regulatory proceedings, or other consequences which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Loss of a critical financial institution or insurance relationship could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on financial institution relationships to provide our platform and custodial services. In particular, customer cash holdings on our platform are held with one or more financial institutions. As a registered money services business with FinCEN under the Bank Secrecy Act, as amended by the USA
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PATRIOT Act of 2001, and its implementing regulations enforced by FinCEN, or collectively, the BSA, a licensed money transmitter in a number of U.S. states and territories, a licensee under NYDFS’s Virtual Currency Business Activity regime, commonly referred to as a BitLicense, a licensed electronic money institution and a registered Virtual Asset Service Provider with the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, a licensed electronic money institution under the Central Bank of Ireland, a MiCA-licensed crypto asset service provider supervised by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier in Luxembourg, and a limited purpose trust company chartered by the NYDFS, our financial institution partners view us as a higher risk customer for purposes of their anti-money laundering programs. We may face difficulty establishing or maintaining such relationships due to instability in the global banking system, increasing regulatory uncertainty and scrutiny, or our partners’ policies and some prior partners have terminated their relationship with us or have limited access to services. The loss of these partners or the imposition of operational restrictions by these partners and the inability for us to utilize other redundant financial institutions may result in a of business activity as well as regulatory risks. In addition, as a result of the myriad of regulations or the risks of crypto assets generally, financial institutions in the United States and globally may decide to not provide, or be prohibited from providing, account, custody, or other financial services to us or our industry generally. Further, we have existing redundancies in U.S. and global financial institutions that work with crypto companies with which we engage.
However, if these financial institutions are subject to bank resolution or failure, or limit or end their crypto market activity, or if such relationships become severely limited or unavailable to crypto market participants in a certain country, there could be temporary delays in or unavailability of services in such country that are critical to our or our partners’ operations, developers or customers, a further limit on available vendors, reduced quality in services we, our partners, our developers or our customers are able to obtain, and a general disruption to the onchain economy, potentially leading to reduced activity on our platform which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. For example, while our business and operations have not been materially affected by the closures of Silvergate Capital Corp. and Signature Bank and the cessation of their real-time fiat currency payment networks in March 2023, large industry participants, including us and our institutional customers, experienced a temporary to transfer fiat currencies outside of standard business hours.
We also rely on insurance carriers to insure customer losses resulting from a breach of our physical security, cybersecurity, or by employee or third party theft and hold surety bonds as required for compliance with certain of our licenses under applicable state laws. Our ability to maintain crime, specie, and cyber insurance, as well as surety bonds, is subject to the insurance carriers’ ongoing underwriting criteria and our inability to obtain and maintain appropriate insurance coverage could cause a substantial business disruption, adverse reputational impact, inability to compete with our competitors, and regulatory scrutiny, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Any significant disruption in our products and services, in our information technology systems, or in any of the blockchain networks we support, could result in a loss of customers or funds and adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our reputation and ability to attract and retain customers and grow our business depends on our ability to operate our service at high levels of reliability, scalability, and performance, including the ability to process and monitor, on a daily basis, a large number of transactions that occur at high volume and frequencies across multiple systems. Our platform, the ability of our customers to trade, and our ability to operate at a high level, are dependent on our ability to access the blockchain networks underlying the supported crypto assets, for which access is dependent on our systems’ ability to access the internet. Further, the successful and continued operations of such blockchain networks will depend on a network of computers, miners, or validators, and their continued operations, all of which may be impacted by service interruptions.
Our systems, the systems of our third-party service providers and partners, and certain crypto asset and blockchain networks have experienced from time to time, and may experience in the future service interruptions or degradation because of hardware and software defects or malfunctions, distributed
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denial-of-service and other cyberattacks, insider threats, break-ins, sabotage, human error, vandalism, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, and other natural disasters, power losses, disruptions in telecommunications services, fraud, military or political conflicts, terrorist attacks, computer viruses or other malware, or other events. In addition, extraordinary Trading Volumes or site usage could cause our computer systems to operate at an unacceptably slow speed or even fail. Some of our systems, including systems of companies we have acquired, or the systems of our third-party service providers and partners are not fully redundant, and our or their recovery planning may not be sufficient for all possible outcomes or events.
If any of our systems, or those of our third-party service providers, are disrupted for any reason, our products and services may fail, resulting in unanticipated disruptions, slower response times and delays in our customers’ trade execution and processing, failed settlement of trades, incomplete or inaccurate accounting, recording or processing of trades, unauthorized trades, loss of customer information, increased demand on limited customer support resources, customer claims, complaints with regulatory organizations, lawsuits, or enforcement actions. Further, when these disruptions occur, we have in the past, and may in the future, fulfill customer transactions using inventory to prevent adverse user impact and limit impact to our operating results. A in the availability or reduction in the availability, speed, or functionality of our products and services could our business. Significant or in our services could cause current or potential customers or partners to believe that our systems are , them to switch to our competitors or to avoid or reduce the use of our products and services, and could permanently our reputation and brands. Moreover, to the extent that any system or similar event results in to our customers or their business partners, these customers or partners could seek significant compensation or contractual from us for their , and those , even if , would likely be time-consuming and for us to address. with the reliability or security of our systems would our reputation and the cost of remedying these could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Because we are a regulated financial institution in certain jurisdictions, interruptions have resulted and in the future may result in regulatory scrutiny, and significant or persistent interruptions could lead to significant fines and penalties, and mandatory and costly changes to our business practices, and ultimately could cause us to lose existing licenses or financial institution relationships that we need to operate or prevent or delay us from obtaining additional licenses that may be required for our business.
In addition, we are continually improving and upgrading our information systems and technologies. Implementation of new systems and technologies is complex, expensive, time-consuming, and may not be successful. If we fail to timely and successfully implement new information systems and technologies, or improvements or upgrades to existing information systems and technologies, or if such systems and technologies do not operate as intended, it could adversely affect our internal controls (including internal controls over financial reporting), and our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our failure to securely store and manage our and our customers’ fiat currencies and crypto assets could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We hold cash and store crypto assets on behalf of our customers and hold fiat and crypto for corporate investment and operating purposes. In addition, following the acquisition of Coinbase Asset Management, formerly One River Digital Asset Management (“CBAM”), we additionally store an immaterial amount of cryptocurrencies at third-party custodians for asset management products. Further, following our acquisition of Deribit, certain amounts of cryptocurrencies are stored at third-party custodians to support trading activity on Deribit’s platform.
Securely storing customers’ cash and crypto assets is integral to the trust we build with our customers. We believe our policies, procedures, operational controls and controls over financial reporting, protect us from material risks surrounding the storing of these assets and conflicts of interest. Our controls over financial reporting include among others, controls over the segregation of corporate crypto
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asset balances from customer crypto asset balances, controls over the processes of customer crypto asset deposits and customer crypto asset withdrawals and corporate and customer fiat balances. Our financial statements and disclosures, as a whole, are available through periodic filings on a quarterly basis, and compliant with annual audit requirements of Article 3 of Regulation S-X.
We hold cash at financial institutions in accounts designated as for the benefit of our customers. We have also entered into partnerships or joint ventures with third parties, such as with Circle, where we or our partners receive and hold customer funds. Our and our financial partners’ abilities to manage and accurately hold customer cash and cash we hold for our own investment and operating purposes requires a high level of internal controls. We are limited in our ability to influence or manage the controls and processes of third-party partners or vendors and may be dependent on our partners’ and vendors’ operations, liquidity and financial condition to manage these risks. As we maintain, grow and expand our product and services offerings we also must scale and strengthen our internal controls and processes, and monitor our third-party partners’ and vendors’ ability to similarly scale and strengthen. Failure to do so could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. This is important both to the actual controls and processes and the public perception of the same.
Any inability by us to maintain our procedures, perceived or otherwise, could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. Accordingly, we take steps to ensure customer cash is always secure. Customer cash and crypto asset balances are maintained through our internal ledgering processes. Customer cash is maintained in segregated Company financial institution accounts that are held for the exclusive benefit of customers with our financial institution partners or in government money market funds or other permissible investments. We store crypto assets using proprietary technology and operational processes. Crypto assets are not insured or guaranteed by any government or government agency, however we have worked hard to securely store our customers’ crypto assets and our own crypto assets for investment and operational purposes with legal and operational protections.
Any material failure by us or our partners to maintain the necessary controls, policies, procedures or to manage the crypto assets we hold for our own investment and operating purposes could also adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Further, any material failure by us or our partners to maintain the necessary controls or to manage customer crypto assets and funds appropriately and in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements could result in reputational harm, litigation, regulatory enforcement actions, significant financial losses, lead customers to discontinue or reduce their use of our and our partners’ products, and result in significant penalties and fines and additional restrictions, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Moreover, because custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a , the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors. This may result in customers finding our custodial services more and less and any to increase our customer base, or reduction in use of our platform and products by existing customers as a result could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Additionally, following the acquisition of CBAM, some of our asset management products hold customer assets at third-party custodians with their own protection procedures.
We place great importance on securely storing crypto assets we custody and keeping them bankruptcy remote from our general creditors, and in June 2022 we updated our Retail User Agreement to clarify the applicability of Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) Article 8 to custodied crypto assets – the same legal protection that our institutional custody and prime broker clients also rely upon. UCC Article 8 provides that financial assets held by Coinbase are not property of Coinbase and not subject to the claims of its general creditors. In light of UCC Article 8, we believe that a court would not treat custodied crypto assets as part of our general estate; however, due to the novelty of crypto assets, courts have not yet considered this type of treatment for custodied crypto assets. Our MiCA-authorized entity in the E.U. securely stores client assets in dedicated, segregated custody vaults with separate books-and-records
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from Coinbase’s own and other client funds, and uses tightly controlled settlement flows to preserve access to global liquidity and fast execution.
We deposit, transfer, and custody customer cash and crypto assets in multiple jurisdictions. In each instance, we require bank-level security encryption to store customers’ assets for our wallet and storage systems, as well as our financial management systems related to such custodial functions. Our security technology is designed to prevent, detect, and mitigate inappropriate access to our systems, by internal or external threats. We believe we have developed and maintained administrative, technical, and physical measures designed to comply with applicable legal requirements and industry standards. However, it is nevertheless possible that hackers, employees or service providers acting contrary to our policies, or others could circumvent these measures to improperly access our systems or documents, or the systems or documents of our business partners, agents, or service providers, and improperly access, obtain, or misuse customer crypto assets and funds. The methods used to obtain unauthorized access, disable, or degrade service or sabotage systems are also constantly changing and evolving and may be to anticipate or detect for long periods of time. Certain of our customer contracts do not limit our liability with respect to security and other security-related matters and our insurance coverage for such is limited and may not cover the extent of nor the nature of such , in which case we may be liable for the full amount of , which could be than all of our assets. Our ability to maintain insurance is also subject to the insurance carriers’ ongoing underwriting criteria. Any of customer cash or crypto assets could result in a subsequent in insurance coverage, which could cause a substantial business , reputational impact, to compete with our competitors, and regulatory , inquiries, or actions. Additionally, transactions undertaken through our websites or other electronic channels may create risks of , hacking, access or acquisition, and other practices. Any security resulting in a compromise of customer assets could result in substantial costs to us and require us to notify impacted individuals, and in some cases regulators, of a possible or actual , us to regulatory enforcement actions, including substantial , limit our ability to provide services, subject us to , significant financial , our reputation, and affect our business, operating results, financial condition, and cash flows.
The theft, loss, or destruction of private keys required to access any crypto assets held in custody for our own account or for our customers may be irreversible. If we are unable to access our private keys or if we experience a hack or other data loss relating to our ability to access any crypto assets, it could cause regulatory scrutiny, reputational harm, and other losses.
Crypto assets are generally controllable only by the possessor of the unique private key relating to the digital wallet in which the crypto assets are held. While blockchain protocols typically require public addresses to be published when used in a transaction, private keys must be secured and kept private in order to prevent a third party from accessing the crypto assets held in such a wallet. To the extent that any of the private keys relating to our wallets containing crypto assets held for our own account or for our customers is lost, destroyed, or otherwise compromised or unavailable, and no backup of the private key is accessible, we will be unable to access the crypto assets held in the related wallet. Further, we cannot provide assurance that our wallets will not be hacked or compromised. Crypto assets and blockchain technologies have been, and may in the future be, subject to security breaches, hacking, or other malicious activities. Any loss of private keys relating to, or hack or other compromise of, digital wallets used to store our customers’ crypto assets could adversely affect our customers’ ability to access or sell their crypto assets, require us to reimburse our customers for their , and subject us to significant financial in addition to customer trust in us and our products. As such, any of private keys due to a hack, employee or service provider or , or other compromise by third parties could our brand and reputation, result in significant , and affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
To mitigate the risks associated with the loss or theft of keys, we utilize both hot wallets and cold wallets in our custodial solutions. We actively manage wallet balances and generally seek to hold no more than 2% of custodied assets in hot wallets at any given time. Cold wallet private key materials are
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stored and secured at facilities within the United States and internationally. We store the substantial majority of our own crypto asset holdings utilizing the same storage solutions that we provide to our customers. In limited cases, we use storage solutions not offered to our customers to store immaterial amounts of crypto held for corporate purposes outside of our core custodial product offerings. Additionally, both Deribit and our CBAM offering utilize both Coinbase custody services and third parties as custodians.
At all times, we hold corporate assets in excess of the total amount of assets held in our hot wallets. Similar to most financial institutions, the total customer assets on our platform, such as those assets held in cold storage, are substantially more than our corporate assets and available insurance. While we have for years maintained, and continue to maintain, a commercial crime insurance policy, which has a one-year term without automatic renewals, in the event of a loss from our cold wallets, our assets may be insufficient to cover amounts that exceed our insurance coverage. We may be liable for such uninsured losses where we are required to reimburse customers, and such liability could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Other Risks Related to Our Business and Financial Position
If we fail to retain existing customers or add new customers, or if our customers decrease their level of engagement with our products, services and platform, our business, operating results, and financial condition may be significantly harmed.
Our success depends on our ability to retain existing customers and attract new customers, including developers, to increase engagement with our products, services, and platform. To do so, we must continue to offer leading technologies and ensure that our products and services are secure, reliable, and engaging. We must also expand our products and services, and offer competitive prices in an increasingly crowded and price-sensitive market. There is no assurance that we will be able to continue to do so, that we will be able to retain our current customers or attract new customers, or keep our customers engaged. Any number of factors can negatively affect customer retention, growth, and engagement, including if:
• customers increasingly engage with competing products and services, including products and services that we are unable to offer due to regulatory reasons;
• we fail to introduce new and improved products and services, or if we introduce new products or services that are not favorably received;
• we fail to support new and in-demand crypto assets or if we elect to support crypto assets with negative reputations;
• there are changes in sentiment about the quality or usefulness of our products and services or concerns related to privacy, security, fiat pegging or other factors;
• there are adverse changes in our products and services that are mandated by legislation, regulatory authorities, or litigation;
• customers perceive the crypto assets on our platform to be bad investments, or experience significant losses in investments made on our platform;
• technical or other problems prevent us from delivering our products and services with the speed, functionality, security, and reliability that our customers expect;
• cybersecurity incidents, employee or service provider misconduct, or other unforeseen activities cause losses to us or our customers, including losses to assets held by us on behalf of our customers;
• modifications to our pricing model or modifications by competitors to their pricing models;
• we fail to provide adequate customer service;
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• regulatory and governmental bodies in countries that we target for expansion express negative views towards crypto asset trading platforms and, more broadly, our industry; or
• we or other companies or high-profile figures in our industry are the subject of adverse media reports or other negative publicity.
From time to time, certain of these factors have negatively affected customer retention, growth, and engagement to varying degrees. If we are unable to maintain or increase our customer base and customer engagement, our revenue and financial results may be adversely affected. Any decrease in user retention, growth, or engagement could render our products and services less attractive to customers and lead to a decrease in revenue, and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected. If our customer growth rate slows or declines, we will become increasingly dependent on our ability to maintain or increase levels of user engagement and monetization in order to drive growth of revenue.
Our operating expenses may increase in the future and we may not be successful in increasing our revenue to sufficiently offset these higher expenses, which could impact our ability to achieve profitability or positive cash flow from operations on a consistent basis and cause our business, operating results, and financial condition to be adversely affected.
Our operating expenses may increase in the future as we continue to grow our business. While we consistently evaluate opportunities to drive efficiency, we cannot guarantee that these efforts will be successful or that we will not need to increase operating expenditures in the future. Our operations may prove more expensive than we currently anticipate, and we may not succeed in increasing our net revenue sufficiently to offset these higher expenses. Additionally, our revenue growth may be negatively impacted by, among other things, reduced demand for our offerings, increased competition, adverse macroeconomic conditions, any decrease in the growth or size of our industry, regulatory uncertainty or scrutiny, changes that impact our ability to offer certain products or services, or failure of new products and services to gain market adoption. As a result, we cannot be certain that we will be able to achieve or operating cash flow on any quarterly or annual basis. If we are to effectively manage these risks and as we encounter them, our business, operating results, and financial condition may .
If we do not effectively manage our growth, including through acquisitions and by maintaining and improving our systems and processes, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We have experienced, and may experience in the future, periods of significant growth. To effectively manage and capitalize on our growth periods, we will need to manage headcount, capital, and processes efficiently while making investments such as expanding our information technology and financial, operating, and administrative systems and controls, and such initiatives could strain our resources. We could experience operating difficulties in managing our business as it expands across numerous jurisdictions, including difficulties in hiring, training, managing and retaining a remote and evolving employee base, as well as challenges integrating acquired businesses, technologies, and personnel. If we do not adapt or scale to meet these evolving challenges, or if we fail to successfully integrate acquisitions, we may experience erosion to our brand, the quality of our products and services may suffer, and our company culture may be harmed. Moreover, the of our systems and processes could our ability to provide accurate, timely, and reliable reports on our financial and operating results, including the financial statements provided herein, and could impact the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting. In addition, our systems and processes may not prevent or detect all , , or . Any of the foregoing operational could lead to with laws and regulations, of operating licenses or other authorizations, or of financial institution relationships that could substantially or even company operations.
Successful implementation of our growth strategy will also require significant expenditures before any substantial associated revenue is generated and we cannot guarantee that these increased investments
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will result in corresponding and offsetting revenue growth. For example, we may pay substantial premiums for acquired businesses and there can be no assurance that anticipated synergies or benefits will be realized on the timeline expected, or at all. Because we have a limited history operating our business at its current scale, it is difficult to evaluate our current business and future prospects, including our ability to plan for and model future growth. Our limited operating experience at this scale, combined with the rapidly evolving and volatile nature of the crypto asset market in which we operate, and other economic factors beyond our control, reduces our ability to accurately forecast quarterly or annual revenue.
Additionally, from time to time, we have realigned our resources and talent to meet evolving business needs. This has previously included layoffs and workforce reductions aimed at cutting costs, improving efficiency, and responding to economic shifts. If there are unforeseen expenses associated with such realignments in our business strategies, and we incur unanticipated charges or liabilities, then we may not be able to effectively realize the expected cost savings or other benefits of such actions. Failure to manage any growth or any scaling back of our operations could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our strategy and focus on delivering high-quality, compliant, easy-to-use, and secure crypto-related financial services may not maximize short-term or medium-term financial results.
We have taken, and expect to continue to take, actions that we believe are in the best interests of our customers and the long-term interests of our business, even if those actions do not necessarily maximize short-term or medium-term results. These include expending significant managerial, technical, and legal efforts on complying with laws and regulations that are applicable to our products and services and ensuring that our products are secure. We also focus on driving long-term engagement with our customers through innovation and developing new industry-leading products and technologies. These decisions may not be consistent with the short-term and medium-term expectations of our shareholders and may not produce the long-term benefits that we expect, which could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Laws and regulations regarding conflicts of interest associated with the use of predictive data analytics, digital engagement practices, and similar technologies, if adopted and found to be applicable to our business, may require us to modify, limit, or discontinue our use of certain technologies and features contained within our products and services and may impact the way that we interact with existing and prospective customers, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our products, services and educational offerings incorporate a holistic, customer-centric set of digital engagement practices, including educational content and notifications, which are designed, in part, to promote financial literacy and awareness and to provide customers with guidance and information to help them make better informed decisions about their crypto activity. Certain jurisdictions have proposed or are considering laws and regulations regarding conflicts of interest associated with the use of predictive data analytics, digital engagement practices, and similar technologies by broker-dealers, investment advisers and/or other securities market participants. If adopted and found to apply to our business, such laws or regulations may impose obligations on us that may require us to modify, limit, or discontinue our use of certain technologies and features used in connection with our products and services and/or to change the way that we interact with existing and prospective customers, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Because our long-term success depends, in part, on our ability to expand our sales to customers outside the United States, our business is susceptible to risks associated with international operations.
We currently have subsidiaries in the United States and abroad. We plan to enter into or increase our presence in additional markets around the world. We have a limited operating history outside the United
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States, and our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally requires considerable management attention and resources and is subject to particular challenges of supporting a growing business in an environment of diverse cultures, languages, customs, tax laws, legal systems, alternate dispute systems, and regulatory systems. As we continue to expand our business and customer base outside the United States, we will be increasingly susceptible to risks associated with international operations. These risks and challenges include:
• difficulty establishing and managing international operations and the increased operations, travel, infrastructure, including establishment of local customer service operations, local infrastructure to manage supported cryptocurrency or other financial instruments and corresponding books and records, and legal and regulatory compliance costs associated with different jurisdictions;
• the need to vary pricing and margins to effectively compete in international markets;
• the need to adapt and localize our products and services for specific countries, including offering services and support in local languages;
• compliance with multiple, potentially conflicting and changing governmental laws and regulations across different jurisdictions;
• compliance with U.S. and foreign laws designed to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities, as well as economic and trade sanctions;
• the need to comply with a greater set of law enforcement inquiries including those subject to mutual legal assistance treaties;
• compliance with the extraterritorial reach of any U.S. regulatory rules, including those imposed by the CFTC, SEC, FinCEN or other U.S. based regulators;
• difficulties obtaining and maintaining required licensing from regulators in foreign jurisdictions;
• competition with companies that have greater experience in the local markets, pre-existing relationships with customers in these markets or are subject to less regulatory requirements in local jurisdictions;
• varying levels of payments and blockchain technology adoption and infrastructure, and increased network, payment processing, banking, and other costs;
• compliance with anti-bribery laws, including compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010, and other local anticorruption laws;
• difficulties collecting in foreign currencies and associated foreign currency exposure;
• difficulties holding, repatriating, and transferring funds held in offshore bank accounts;
• difficulties adapting to foreign customary commercial practices, enforcing contracts and collecting accounts receivable, longer payment cycles and other collection difficulties;
• restrictions on crypto asset trading;
• stringent local labor laws and regulations;
• potentially adverse tax developments and consequences;
• antitrust and competition regulations; and
• regional economic and political conditions.
We may not be able to penetrate or successfully operate in the markets we choose to enter. In addition, we may incur significant expenses as a result of our international expansion, and we may not be successful. We may face limited brand recognition in certain parts of the world that could lead to non-acceptance or delayed acceptance of our products and services by customers in new markets. We may also face challenges in complying with local laws and regulations. For example, we may be subject to
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regulatory frameworks that are evolving, have not undergone extensive rulemaking, and could result in uncertain outcomes for our customers and/or our ability to offer competitive products in the broader onchain economy. Our failure to successfully manage these risks could harm our international operations and have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Disputes with our customers could adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
From time to time we have been, and may in the future be, subject to claims and disputes with our customers with respect to our products and services, such as regarding the execution and settlement of crypto asset trades, fraudulent or unauthorized transactions, account takeovers, deposits and withdrawals of crypto assets, failures or malfunctions of our systems and services, or other issues relating to our products and services. For example, during periods of heavy Trading Volumes, we have received increased customer complaints. Additionally, the ingenuity of criminal fraudsters, combined with many consumer users’ susceptibility to fraud, may cause our customers to be subject to ongoing account takeovers and identity fraud issues. While we have taken measures to detect and reduce the risk of fraud, there is no guarantee that they will be and, in any case, require continuous and optimization for continually evolving forms of to be . There can be no guarantee that we will be in detecting and resolving these or ourselves in any of these matters, and any may result in relationships with our customers, to our brand and reputation, and substantial and . In some cases, the measures we have implemented to detect and have led to customer experiences, including indefinite account inaccessibility for some of our customers, which increases our customer support costs and can compound . We could incur significant costs in compensating our customers, such as if a transaction was , , or . We could also incur significant legal expenses resolving and , even those without merit. To the extent we are found to have to fulfill our regulatory obligations, we could also our authorizations or licenses or become subject to conditions that could make future operations more , our ability to grow, and affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. We currently are, or may in the future become, subject to and enforcement action by state, federal, and international consumer protection agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC”), state agencies and attorneys general in the United States, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K. Financial Ombudsman Service, and the U.K. Office of Fair Trading, each of which monitors customer us and, from time to time, matters for and potential enforcement us.
While certain of our customer agreements contain arbitration provisions with class action waiver provisions that may limit our exposure to consumer class action litigation, some federal, state, and foreign courts have refused or may refuse to enforce one or more of these provisions, and there can be no assurance that we will be successful in enforcing these arbitration provisions, including the class action waiver provisions, in the future or in any given case. Legislative, administrative, or regulatory developments may directly or indirectly prohibit or limit the use of pre-dispute arbitration clauses and class action waiver provisions. Any such prohibitions or limitations on or discontinuation of the use of such arbitration or class action waiver provisions could subject us to additional lawsuits, including additional consumer class action litigation, and significantly limit our ability to avoid exposure from consumer class action litigation.
We may suffer losses due to staking, delegating, and other related services we provide to our customers.
Certain supported crypto assets enable holders to earn rewards by participating in decentralized governance, bookkeeping and transaction confirmation activities on their underlying blockchain networks, such as through staking activities, including staking through validation, delegating, and baking. We currently provide and expect to continue to provide such services for certain supported crypto assets to our customers in order to enable them to earn rewards based on crypto assets that we hold on their
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behalf. For instance, as a service to customers and at their instruction, we operate staking nodes on certain blockchain networks utilizing customers’ crypto assets and pass through the rewards received to those customers, less a service fee. In other cases, upon customers’ instructions, we may delegate our customers’ assets to third-party service providers that are unaffiliated with us. Some networks may further require customer assets to be transferred into smart contracts on the underlying blockchain networks not under our or anyone’s control. If our validator, any third-party service providers, or smart contracts fail to behave as expected, suffer cybersecurity attacks, experience security issues, or encounter other problems, our customers’ assets may be irretrievably lost. In addition, certain blockchain networks dictate requirements for participation in the relevant decentralized governance activity, and may impose penalties, or “slashing,” if the relevant activities are not performed correctly, such as if the staker, delegator, or baker acts maliciously on the network, “double signs” any transactions, or experience extended downtimes. If we or any of our service providers are slashed by the underlying blockchain network, our customers’ assets may be , withdrawn, or burnt by the network, resulting in for which we may be responsible. Furthermore, certain types of staking require the payment of transaction fees on the underlying blockchain network and such fees can become significant as the amount and complexity of the transaction grows, depending on the degree of network congestion and the price of the network token. If we experience a high volume of such staking requests from our customers on an ongoing basis, we could incur significant costs. Any or slashing events could our brand and reputation, cause us to financial , existing and future customers from utilizing our products and services, and affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We may not be able to generate sufficient cash to service our debt and other obligations, including our obligations under the 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032 Convertible Notes, and Senior Notes.
Our ability to make payments on our indebtedness, including the 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032 Convertible Notes, and Senior Notes, and our other obligations will depend on our financial and operating performance, which is subject to prevailing economic and competitive conditions and to certain financial, business and other factors beyond our control. We may be unable to attain a level of cash flows from operating activities sufficient to permit us to pay the principal, premium, if any, and interest on our indebtedness, including each series of the 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032 Convertible Notes, and Senior Notes, and other obligations.
If we are unable to service our debt and other obligations from cash flows, we may need to refinance or restructure all or a portion of our debt obligations prior to maturity. Our ability to refinance or restructure our debt and other obligations will depend upon the condition of the capital markets and our financial condition at such time. Any refinancing or restructuring could be at higher interest rates and may require us to comply with more onerous covenants, which could further restrict our business operations. Statutory, contractual or other restrictions may also limit our subsidiaries’ ability to pay dividends or make distributions, loans or advances to us. For these reasons, we may not have access to any assets or cash flows of our subsidiaries to make interest and principal payments on each series of the 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032 Convertible Notes, and Senior Notes.
If our cash flows are insufficient to fund our debt and other obligations and we are unable to refinance or restructure these obligations on commercially reasonable terms or at all, we could face substantial liquidity problems and may be forced to reduce or delay investments and capital expenditures, or to sell material assets or operations to meet our debt and other obligations. We cannot assure you that we would be able to implement any of these alternative measures on satisfactory terms or at all or that the proceeds from such alternatives would be adequate to meet any debt or other obligations when due. If it becomes necessary to implement any of these alternative measures, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
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We have a substantial amount of indebtedness and other obligations, which could adversely affect our financial position and prevent us from fulfilling our obligations under the 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032 Convertible Notes, and Senior Notes.
We have a substantial amount of indebtedness and other obligations. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately $7.28 billion in aggregate principal amount of outstanding long-term indebtedness (excluding crypto asset borrowings), which includes $1.74 billion of our Senior Notes, $1.27 billion of our 2026 Convertible Notes, $1.50 billion of our 2029 Convertible Notes, $1.27 billion of our 2030 Convertible Notes, and $1.50 billion of our 2032 Convertible Notes.
Our substantial indebtedness and other obligations may:
• make it difficult for us to satisfy our financial obligations, including making scheduled principal and interest payments on our 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032, Convertible Notes, Senior Notes, and our other obligations;
• limit our ability to use our cash flow for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, or other general business purposes;
• increase our cost of borrowing;
• require us to use a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to make debt service payments and pay our other obligations when due;
• limit our flexibility to plan for, or react to, changes in our business and industry;
• place us at a competitive disadvantage compared to our less leveraged competitors; and
• increase our vulnerability to the impact of adverse economic and industry conditions, including changes in interest rates and foreign exchange rates.
We provide secured loans to our customers, which exposes us to credit risks and may cause us to incur financial or reputational harm.
We provide commercial loans to qualified customers secured by their fiat or crypto asset holdings, including USDC, on our platform, which exposes us to the risk of our borrowers’ inability to repay such loans. In addition, such activity results in us being subject to certain lending laws and regulations in the applicable jurisdiction and as a result we may be subject to additional regulatory scrutiny. In the future we may enter into credit arrangements with financial institutions to obtain more capital. Any termination or interruption in the financial institutions’ ability to lend to us could interrupt our ability to provide capital to qualified customers to the extent we rely on such credit lines to continue to offer or to grow such products. Further, our credit approval process, pricing, loss forecasting, and scoring models may contain errors or may not adequately assess creditworthiness of our borrowers, or may be otherwise ineffective, resulting in incorrect approvals or of loans. It is also possible that loan applicants could provide or information. While we have procedures in place to manage our credit risk, such as conducting due diligence on our customers and running test simulations to monitor and manage exposures, including any exposures resulting from loans collateralized with crypto assets, we remain subject to risks associated with our borrowers’ creditworthiness and our approval process.
Borrower loan loss rates may be significantly affected by economic downturns or general economic conditions beyond our control and beyond the control of individual borrowers. In particular, loss rates on loans may increase due to factors such as prevailing market conditions in our industry, the price of Bitcoin and other crypto assets, which have experienced significant fluctuations, the amount of liquidity in the markets, and other factors. Borrowers may seek protection under federal bankruptcy law or similar laws. If a borrower of a loan files for bankruptcy (or becomes the subject of an involuntary petition), a stay may go into effect that will automatically put any pending collection actions on the loan on hold and prevent further collection action absent bankruptcy court approval. The efficacy of our security interest in customer
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collateral is not guaranteed under applicable state law or the Uniform Commercial Code and therefore we may be exposed to loss in the event of a customer default, even if we appear to be secured against such default. While we have not incurred any material losses to date, if any of the foregoing events were to occur, our reputation and relationships with borrowers, and our financial results, could be harmed. We intend to continue to explore other products, models, and structures for offering commercial financing, and other forms of credit and loan products. Some of those models or structures may require, or be deemed to require, additional data, procedures, partnerships, licenses, regulatory approvals, or capabilities that we have not yet obtained or developed.
We are exposed to transaction losses due to chargebacks, refunds, or returns as a result of fraud or uncollectability that could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Certain of our products and services are paid for by electronic transfers from bank accounts, which exposes us to risks associated with returns and insufficient funds. Furthermore, some of our products and services are paid for by credit and debit cards through payment processors, which exposes us to risks associated with chargebacks and refunds. These risks could arise from fraud, misuse, unintentional use, settlement delay, insufficiency of funds, or other activities. Also, criminals are using increasingly sophisticated methods to engage in illegal activities, such as counterfeiting and fraud. If we are unable to collect such amounts from the customer, or if the customer refuses or is unable, due to or other reasons, to reimburse us, we bear the for the amount of the chargeback, refund, or return.
While we have policies and procedures to manage and mitigate these risks, we cannot be certain that such processes will be effective. Our failure to limit chargebacks and fraudulent transactions could increase the number of returns, refunds, and chargebacks that we have to process. In addition, if the number of returns, refunds, and chargebacks increases, card networks or our financial institution partners could require us to increase reserves, impose penalties on us, charge additional or higher fees, or terminate their relationships with us. Failure to effectively manage risk and prevent fraud could increase our chargeback, refund, and return losses or cause us to incur other liabilities. Increases in chargebacks, refunds, returns, or other liabilities could have an adverse effect on our operating results, financial condition, and cash flows.
We route orders through third-party trading venues in connection with our Coinbase Prime trading service. The loss or failure of any such trading venues could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In connection with our Prime trading service, we routinely route customer orders to third-party exchanges or other trading venues. In connection with these activities, we generally hold cash and other crypto assets with such third-party exchanges or other trading venues in order to effect customer orders. If we were to experience a disruption in our access to these third-party exchanges and trading venues, our Prime trading service could be adversely affected to the extent that we are limited in our ability to execute order flow for our Prime customers. In addition, while we have policies and procedures to help mitigate our risks related to routing orders through third-party trading venues, if any of these third-party trading venues experience any technical, legal, regulatory, or other adverse events, such as shutdowns, delays, system failures, suspension of withdrawals, illiquidity, insolvency, or loss of customer assets, we might not be able to fully recover the cash and other crypto assets that we have deposited with these third parties. As a result, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
Any acquisitions and investments that we make could require significant management attention, disrupt our business, result in dilution to our shareholders, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
As part of our business strategy, we routinely conduct discussions and evaluate opportunities for possible acquisitions, strategic investments, entries into new businesses, joint ventures, and other transactions. We have made, and may continue to make, acquisitions of and investments in, among other
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things, specialized employees and complementary companies, products, services, licenses, or technologies.
For example, as a result of our acquisition of Deribit in August 2025, we now provide additional cryptocurrency products and services internationally, including options and perpetual swaps. If we are unable to successfully integrate Deribit or comply with evolving U.S. and international crypto and derivatives regulations applicable to our expanded operations and products, we could be required to modify or discontinue certain offerings, face limitations on our ability to onboard or serve customers in key markets, incur substantial compliance and remediation costs, or be subject to penalties and other enforcement actions, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In the future, the pace and scale of our acquisitions may increase and may include larger acquisitions than we have done historically. We also invest in companies and technologies, many of which are private companies and technologies that are highly speculative in nature. In the future, we may not be able to find other suitable acquisition and investment candidates, and we may not be able to complete acquisitions or make investments on favorable terms, if at all. In some cases, the costs of such acquisitions and investments may be substantial, and there is no assurance that we will receive a favorable return on investment for our acquisitions and investments. We have and may in the future be required to write off acquisitions or investments. Moreover, our previous and future acquisitions and investments may not achieve our goals, and any future acquisitions and investments we complete could be viewed negatively by customers, developers, advertisers, or investors. In addition, if we fail to successfully close or integrate any acquisitions, or integrate the products or technologies associated with such acquisitions into our company, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected. Our ability to acquire and integrate companies, products, services, licenses, employees, or technologies in a manner is unproven. Any integration process may require significant time and resources, and we may not be to manage the process , including securing regulatory approvals which may be required to close the transaction and to continue to operate the target firm’s business or products in a manner that is useful to us. We may not evaluate or utilize the acquired products, services, technology, or personnel, or accurately forecast the financial impact of an acquisition transaction, including accounting charges. We may have to pay cash, incur debt, or issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition, which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. The sale of equity or issuance of debt to finance any such acquisitions could result in dilution to our shareholders, which, depending on the size of the acquisition, may be significant. The incurrence of indebtedness would result in increased fixed obligations and could also include covenants or other restrictions that would our ability to manage our operations.
If we fail to develop, maintain, and enhance our brand and reputation, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Our brand and reputation are key assets and a competitive advantage. Maintaining, protecting, and enhancing our brand depends largely on the success of our marketing efforts, ability to provide consistent, high-quality, and secure products, services, features, and support, and our ability to successfully secure, maintain, and defend our rights to use the “Coinbase” mark and other trademarks important to our brand. We believe that the importance of our brand will increase as competition further intensifies. Our brand and reputation could be harmed if we fail to achieve these objectives or if our public image were to be tarnished by negative publicity, unexpected events, or actions by third parties. Unfavorable publicity regarding, for example, our product changes, product quality, litigation or regulatory activity, privacy and data security practices, terms of service, employment matters, the use of our products, services, or supported crypto assets for or ends, the actions of our customers, or the actions of other companies that provide similar services to ours, has in the past, and could in the future, affect our reputation. Moreover, to the extent that we acquire a company and maintain that acquired company’s separate brand, we could experience brand dilution or to retain impressions of our own brand to the extent such impressions are instead attributed to the acquired company’s brand. In addition, because we are a founder-led company, actions by, or
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unfavorable publicity about, Brian Armstrong, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, may adversely impact our brand and reputation. Such negative publicity also could have an adverse effect on the size and engagement of our customers and could result in decreased revenue, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Key business metrics and other estimates are subject to inherent challenges in measurement and change as our business evolves, and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected by real or perceived inaccuracies in those metrics or any changes in metrics we disclose.
We regularly review our key business metrics to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, and make strategic decisions. These key business metrics are calculated using internal company data and have not been validated by an independent third-party. While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates for the applicable period of measurement at the time of reporting, there are inherent challenges in such measurements. If we fail to maintain an effective analytics platform, our key business metrics calculations may be inaccurate, and we may not be able to identify those inaccuracies. Additionally, we may in the future calculate certain key business metrics using third-party data. While we believe the third-party data we have used in the past or may use in the future is reliable, we have not independently verified and may not in the future independently verify the accuracy or completeness of the data contained in such sources and there can be no assurance that such data is free of error. Any inaccuracy in the third-party data we use could cause us to or our key business metrics. We regularly review our processes for calculating these metrics, and from time to time we make adjustments to their accuracy. Additionally, our MTUs metric is measured at a point in time and as our products and internal processes for calculating these metrics evolve over time, a previously reported number could fluctuate. We generally will not update previously key business metrics for any such or adjustments that are immaterial.
Our key business metrics may also be impacted by compliance or fraud-related bans, technical incidents, or false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We regularly deactivate fraudulent and spam accounts that violate our terms of service, and exclude these users from the calculation of our key business metrics; however, we may not succeed in identifying and removing all such accounts from our platform. Additionally, users are not prohibited from having more than one account and our MTUs metric may overstate the number of unique customers who have registered an account on our platform as one customer may register for, and use, multiple accounts with different email addresses, phone numbers, or usernames. Furthermore, MTUs may overstate the number of unique consumers due to differences in product architecture or user behavior, which may cause MTUs to fluctuate. For example, a user may currently have an account on the Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet) that is unlinked to their registered account on our platform, but then choose to link these accounts in the future as our product offerings evolve. To the extent that the user had activity in both their Wallet and their registered account in the measurement period, what was previously captured as two unique MTUs would now be counted as a single MTU. If MTUs or our other key business metrics provide us with or information about users and their behavior, we may make conclusions about our business.
We may change our key business metrics from time to time, which may be perceived negatively. Given the rapid evolution of the crypto markets and our revenue sources, we regularly evaluate whether our key business metrics remain meaningful indicators of the performance of our business. As a result of these evaluations, in the past we have decided to make changes, and in the future may make additional changes, to our key business metrics, including adding, eliminating, or replacing existing metrics. Further, if investors or the media perceive any changes to our key business metrics disclosures negatively, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
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Our platform may be exploited to facilitate illegal activity such as fraud, money laundering, gambling, tax evasion, and scams. If our platform is used to further such illegal activities, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Our platform may be exploited to facilitate illegal activity such as fraud, money laundering, gambling, tax evasion, sanctions evasion, and scams. We or our partners may be specifically targeted by individuals seeking to conduct fraudulent or otherwise illicit transfers, and it may be difficult or impossible for us to detect and avoid such transactions in certain circumstances. The use of our platform for illegal or improper purposes could subject us to claims, individual and class action lawsuits, and government and regulatory investigations, prosecutions, enforcement actions, inquiries, or requests that could result in liability and reputational for us. Moreover, certain activities that may be legal in one jurisdiction may be in another jurisdiction, and certain activities that are at one time legal may in the future be deemed in the same jurisdiction. As a result, there is significant uncertainty and cost associated with detecting and monitoring transactions for compliance with local laws. In the event that a customer is found responsible for intentionally or the laws in any jurisdiction, we may be subject to governmental inquiries, enforcement actions, , or otherwise held secondarily liable for aiding or facilitating such activities. Changes in law have also increased the for money transmitters for certain activities, and government authorities may consider increased or additional from time to time. Owners of intellectual property rights or government authorities may seek to bring legal action money transmitters, including us, for involvement in the sale of or items. Any or resulting could result in reputational , and any resulting liabilities, of transaction volume, or increased costs could our business.
Moreover, while fiat currencies can be used to facilitate illegal activities, crypto assets are relatively new and, in many jurisdictions, may be lightly regulated or largely unregulated. Many types of crypto assets have characteristics, such as the speed with which digital currency transactions can be conducted, the ability to conduct transactions without the involvement of regulated intermediaries, the ability to engage in transactions across multiple jurisdictions, the irreversible nature of certain crypto asset transactions, and encryption technology that anonymizes these transactions, that make crypto assets susceptible to use in illegal activity. U.S. federal regulatory authorities and law enforcement agencies, such as the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, SEC, CFTC, FTC, FinCEN or the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), various state securities and financial regulators, such as the NYDFS, and similar foreign regulatory authorities, have taken and continue to take legal actions against persons and entities alleged to be engaged in fraudulent schemes or other illicit activity involving crypto assets. We also support crypto assets that incorporate privacy- features, and may from time to time support additional crypto assets with similar functionalities. These privacy- crypto assets obscure the identities of sender and receiver, and may prevent law enforcement officials from tracing the source of funds on the blockchain. Facilitating transactions in these crypto assets may cause us to be at increased risk of liability arising out of anti-money and economic sanctions laws and regulations.
While we believe that our risk management and compliance framework is designed to detect significant illicit activities conducted by our potential or existing customers, we cannot ensure that we will be able to detect all illegal activity on our platform. Base Chain (formerly Base), an open source permissionless L2 protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain developed by us, has been in the past, and may in the future, be a target for scam tokens or other illegal activity. For example, in August 2023, a number of fraudulent tokens were identified and traded on Base Chain blockchain. As we continue to develop Base Chain, and in light of this fraudulent activity, we continue to invest in improving our security processes, including through our in-house blockchain monitoring capabilities, third-party tools for identifying malicious and out of pattern events, and the monitoring of contract source code and bytecode on Base Chain against a database of known scam code patterns. While to date, such illegal or activity on Base Chain has not had a material impact on our business, operating results, financial condition, or cash flows, future activity could affect our business, operating results, financial condition or cash flows and our efforts to identify and remedy such or activity
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may not be successful. If our platform is used to further such illegal activities, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Our compliance and risk management methods might not be effective and may result in outcomes that could adversely affect our reputation, operating results, and financial condition.
Our ability to comply with applicable complex and evolving laws, regulations, and rules is largely dependent on the establishment, maintenance, and scaling of our compliance, internal audit, and reporting systems to continuously keep pace with our customer activity and transaction volume, as well as our ability to attract and retain qualified compliance and other risk management personnel. While we have devoted significant resources to develop policies and procedures to identify, monitor, and manage our risks, and expect to continue to do so in the future, we cannot assure you that our policies and procedures are and will always be effective or that we have been and will always be successful in monitoring or evaluating the risks to which we are or may be exposed in all market environments or against all types of risks, including unidentified or unanticipated risks. Our risk management policies and procedures rely on a combination of technical and human controls and supervision that are subject to error and failure. Some of our methods for managing risk are discretionary by nature and are based on internally developed controls and observed historical market behavior, and also involve reliance on standard industry practices. These methods may not prevent , particularly as they relate to extreme market movements, which may be significantly than historical fluctuations in the market. Further, market in the future may cause us to reevaluate our risk management policies and procedures. Accordingly, in the future, we may identify gaps in such policies and procedures or existing gaps may become higher risk, and may require significant resources and management attention. Our risk management policies and procedures also may not prevent due to technical if our testing and quality control practices are not in . In addition, we may elect to adjust our risk management policies and procedures to allow for an increase in risk tolerance, which could us to the risk of .
Regulators periodically review our compliance with our own policies and procedures and with a variety of laws and regulations. We have received in the past and may from time to time receive additional examination reports citing violations of rules and regulations and inadequacies in existing compliance programs, and requiring us to enhance certain practices with respect to our compliance program, including due diligence, training, monitoring, reporting, and recordkeeping. If we fail to comply with these, or do not adequately remediate certain findings, regulators could take a variety of actions that could impair our ability to conduct our business, including, but not limited to, delaying, denying, withdrawing, or conditioning approval of certain products and services. In addition, regulators have broad enforcement powers to censure, fine, issue cease and desist orders, prohibit us from engaging in some of our business activities, or revoke our licenses. We face significant intervention by regulatory authorities, including extensive examination and surveillance activities, and will continue to face the risk of significant intervention by regulatory authorities in the future. In the case of non-compliance or non-compliance, we could be subject to and proceedings that may result in substantial or civil lawsuits, including by customers, for which can be significant. Any of these outcomes would affect our reputation and brand and our business, operating results, and financial condition. Some of these outcomes could affect our ability to conduct our business.
We hold certain investments in DeFi protocols and may suffer losses if they do not function as expected.
We hold investments in various DeFi protocols. These protocols achieve their investment purposes through self-executing smart contracts that allow users to invest crypto assets in a pool from which other users can borrow without requiring an intermediate party to facilitate these transactions. These investments earn interest to the investor based on the rates at which borrowers repay the loan, and can generally be withdrawn with no restrictions. However, these DeFi protocols are subject to various risks, including uncertain regulatory and compliance conditions in large markets such as the United States, the risk that the underlying smart contract is insecure, the risk that borrowers may default and the investor will
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not be able to recover its investment, the risk that any underlying collateral may experience significant volatility, and the risk of certain core developers with protocol administration rights can make unauthorized or harmful changes to the underlying smart contract. If any of these risks materialize, our investments in these DeFi protocols may be adversely impacted.
We may suffer losses due to abrupt and erratic market movements.
The crypto asset market has been characterized by significant volatility and unexpected price movements, and has experienced significant declines in the past. Certain crypto assets may become more volatile and less liquid in a very short period of time, resulting in market prices being subject to erratic and abrupt market movement, which could harm our business. For instance, abrupt changes in volatility or market movement can lead to extreme pressures on our platform and infrastructure that can lead to inadvertent suspension of services across parts of the platform or the entire platform. As a result, from time to time we experience outages. For example, in 2025, we experienced approximately 10 outages, with an average outage duration of 74.2 minutes. can lead to increased customer service expense, can cause customer and reputational , result in inquiries and actions by regulators, and can lead to other for which we may be responsible.
Risks Related to Crypto Assets
Due to unfamiliarity and some negative publicity associated with crypto asset platforms, confidence or interest in crypto asset platforms may decline.
Crypto asset platforms are relatively new. Many of our competitors are unlicensed, unregulated, operate without supervision by any governmental authorities, and do not provide the public with significant information regarding their ownership structure, management team, corporate practices, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance. As a result, customers and the general public may lose confidence or interest in crypto asset platforms, including regulated platforms like ours.
Since the inception of our industry, numerous crypto asset platforms have been sued, investigated, or shut down due to fraud, manipulative practices, business failure, and security breaches. In many of these instances, customers of these platforms were not compensated or made whole for their losses. Larger platforms like us are more appealing targets for hackers and malware, and may also be more likely to be targets of regulatory enforcement actions. For example, in February 2014, Mt. Gox, the then largest crypto asset platform worldwide, filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan after an estimated 700,000 Bitcoins were stolen from its wallets. In May 2019, Binance, one of the world’s largest platforms, was hacked, resulting in losses of approximately $40 million, and in February 2021, Bitfinex settled a long-running legal dispute with the State of New York related to Bitfinex’s of over $800 million of customer assets. The of several prominent crypto trading venues and lending platforms in 2022 resulted in a of confidence in the broader industry, reputational impact to crypto asset platforms, increased publicity surrounding crypto more broadly, heightened by regulators and lawmakers and a call for increased regulations of crypto assets and crypto asset platforms.
In addition, there have been reports that a significant amount of crypto asset trading volume on crypto asset platforms is fabricated and false in nature, with a specific focus on unregulated platforms located outside the United States. Such reports may indicate that the market for crypto asset platform activities is significantly smaller than otherwise understood.
Negative perception, a lack of stability and standardized regulation in our industry, and the closure or temporary shutdown of crypto asset platforms due to fraud, business failure, hackers or malware, or government mandated regulation, and associated losses suffered by customers may continue to reduce confidence or interest in our industry and result in greater volatility of the prices of assets, including significant depreciation in value. Any of these events could have an adverse impact on our business and our customers’ perception of us, including decreased use of our platform and loss of customer demand for our products and services.
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Depositing and withdrawing crypto assets into and from our platforms involve risks, which could result in loss of customer assets, customer disputes and other liabilities, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In order to own, transfer and use a crypto asset on its underlying blockchain network, a person must have a private and public key pair associated with a network address, commonly referred to as a “wallet.” Each wallet is associated with a unique “public key” and “private key” pair, each of which is a string of alphanumerical characters. To deposit crypto assets held by a customer onto our platforms, a customer must “sign” a transaction that consists of the private key of the wallet from where the customer is transferring crypto assets, the public key of a wallet that we control which we provide to the customer, and broadcast the deposit transaction onto the underlying blockchain network. Similarly, to withdraw crypto assets from our platforms, the customer must provide us with the public key of the wallet that the crypto assets are to be transferred to, and we would be required to “sign” a transaction authorizing the transfer. In addition, some crypto networks require additional information to be provided in connection with any transfer of crypto assets to or from our platforms. A number of errors can occur in the process of depositing or withdrawing crypto assets into or from our platforms, such as typos, mistakes, or the failure to include the information required by the blockchain network. For instance, a user may incorrectly enter our wallet’s public key or the recipient’s public key when depositing and withdrawing from our platforms, respectively. Alternatively, a user may transfer crypto assets to a wallet address that the user does not own, control or hold the private keys to. In addition, each wallet address is only compatible with the underlying blockchain network on which it is created. For instance, a Bitcoin wallet address can only be used to send and receive Bitcoins. If any Ethereum or other crypto assets are sent to a Bitcoin wallet address, or if any of the foregoing occur, all of the customer’s sent crypto assets will be permanently and irretrievably with no means of recovery. We have encountered and expect to continue to encounter similar with our customers. Such could result in customer , to our brand and reputation, legal us, and financial liabilities, any of which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Moreover, we hold customer assets one-to-one at all times and we have procedures to process redemptions and withdrawals expeditiously, following the terms of the applicable user agreements. We have not experienced excessive redemptions or withdrawals, or prolonged suspended redemptions or withdrawals, of crypto assets to date. However, similar to traditional financial institutions, we may experience temporary process-related withdrawal delays. For example, we, and traditional financial institutions, may experience such delays if there is a significant volume of withdrawal requests that is vastly beyond anticipated levels. This does not mean we cannot or will not satisfy withdrawals, but this may mean a temporary delay in satisfying withdrawal requests, which we still expect to be satisfied within the withdrawal timelines set forth in the applicable user agreements or otherwise communicated by us. To the extent we have process-related delays, even if brief or due to blockchain network congestion or heightened redemption activity, and within the terms of an applicable user agreement or otherwise communicated by us, we may experience increased customer and to our brand and reputation and face additional regulatory , any of which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
A temporary or permanent blockchain “fork” to any supported crypto asset could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Blockchain protocols, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, are open source. Any user can download the software, modify it, and then propose that Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other blockchain protocols users and miners adopt the modification. When a modification is introduced and a substantial majority of users and miners consent to the modification, the change is implemented and the Bitcoin, Ethereum or other blockchain protocol networks, as applicable, remain uninterrupted. However, if less than a substantial majority of users and miners consent to the proposed modification, and the modification is not compatible with the software prior to its modification, the consequence would be what is known as a “fork” (i.e., “split”) of the impacted blockchain protocol network and respective blockchain, with one prong running the pre-modified software and the other running the modified software. The effect of such a fork would be the
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existence of two parallel versions of the Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other blockchain protocol network, as applicable, running simultaneously, but with each split network’s crypto asset lacking interchangeability.
Both Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols have been subject to “forks” that resulted in the creation of new networks, including Bitcoin Cash ABC, Bitcoin Cash SV, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Gold, Ethereum Classic, EthereumPOW, and others. Some of these forks have caused fragmentation among platforms as to the correct naming convention for forked crypto assets. Due to the lack of a central registry or rulemaking body, no single entity has the ability to dictate the nomenclature of forked crypto assets, causing disagreements and a lack of uniformity among platforms on the nomenclature of forked crypto assets, and which results in further confusion to customers as to the nature of assets they hold on platforms. In addition, several of these forks were contentious and as a result, participants in certain communities may harbor ill will towards other communities. As a result, certain community members may take actions that adversely impact the use, adoption, and price of Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any of their forked alternatives.
Furthermore, hard forks can lead to new security concerns. For instance, when the Ethereum and Ethereum Classic networks split in July 2016, replay attacks, in which transactions from one network were rebroadcast on the other network to achieve “double-spending,” plagued platforms that traded Ethereum through at least October 2016, resulting in significant losses to some crypto asset platforms. Similar replay attacks occurred in connection with the Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Cash SV network split in November 2018. Another possible result of a hard fork is an inherent decrease in the level of security due to the splitting of some mining power across networks, making it easier for a malicious actor to exceed 50% of the mining power of that network, thereby making crypto assets that rely on proof-of-work more susceptible to attack, as has occurred with Ethereum Classic.
We do not believe that we are required to support any fork or airdrop or provide the benefit of any forked or airdropped crypto asset to our customers. However, we have in the past and may in the future continue to be subject to claims by customers arguing that they are entitled to receive certain forked or airdropped crypto assets by virtue of crypto assets that they hold with us. If any customers succeed on a claim that they are entitled to receive the benefits of a forked or airdropped crypto asset that we do not or are unable to support, we may be required to pay significant damages, fines or other fees to compensate customers for their losses.
Future forks may occur at any time. A fork can lead to a disruption of networks and our information technology systems, cybersecurity attacks, replay attacks, or security weaknesses, any of which can further lead to temporary or even permanent loss of our and our customers’ assets. Such disruption and loss could cause us to be exposed to liability, even in circumstances where we have no intention of supporting an asset compromised by a fork.
We currently support, and expect to continue to support, certain smart contract-based crypto assets. If the underlying smart contracts for these crypto assets do not operate as expected, they could lose value and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We currently support, and expect to continue to support, various crypto assets that represent units of value on smart contracts deployed on a third-party blockchain. Smart contracts are programs that store and transfer value and execute automatically when certain conditions are met. Since smart contracts typically cannot be stopped or reversed, vulnerabilities in their programming and design can have damaging effects. For instance, in April 2018, a batch overflow bug was found in many Ethereum-based ERC20-compatible smart contract tokens that allowed hackers to create a large number of smart contract tokens, causing multiple crypto asset platforms worldwide to shut down ERC20-compatible token trading. Similarly, in March 2020, a design flaw in the MakerDAO smart contract caused forced liquidations of crypto assets at significantly discounted prices, resulting in millions of dollars of losses to users who had deposited crypto assets into the smart contract. If any such vulnerabilities or flaws come to fruition, smart contract-based crypto assets, including those held by our customers on our platforms, may
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negative publicity, be exposed to security vulnerabilities, decline significantly in value, and lose liquidity over a short period of time.
In some cases, smart contracts can be controlled by one or more “admin keys” or users with special privileges, or “super users.” These users have the ability to unilaterally make changes to the smart contract, enable or disable features on the smart contract, change how the smart contract receives external inputs and data, and make other changes to the smart contract. For smart contracts that hold a pool of reserves, these users may also be able to extract funds from the pool, liquidate assets held in the pool, or take other actions that decrease the value of the assets held by the smart contract in reserves. Even for crypto assets that have adopted a decentralized governance mechanism, such as smart contracts that are governed by the holders of a governance token, such governance tokens can be concentrated in the hands of a small group of core community members, who would be able to make similar changes unilaterally to the smart contract. If any such super user or group of core members unilaterally make adverse changes to a smart contract, the design, functionality, features and value of the smart contract, its related crypto assets may be harmed. In addition, assets held by the smart contract in reserves may be , , burnt, locked up or otherwise become and . These super users can also become targets of hackers and attackers. If an attacker is to access or obtain the super user privileges of a smart contract, or if a smart contract’s super users or core community members take actions that affect the smart contract, our customers who hold and transact in the affected crypto assets may experience decreased functionality and value of the applicable crypto assets, up to and including a total of the value of such crypto assets. Although we do not control these smart contracts, any such events could cause customers to seek us for their , result in reputational to us, or in other ways affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
From time to time, we may encounter technical issues in connection with the integration of supported crypto assets and changes and upgrades to their underlying networks, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In order to support any supported crypto asset, a variety of front and back-end technical and development work is required to implement our wallet, custody, trading, staking and other solutions for our customers, and to integrate such supported crypto asset with our existing technical infrastructure. For certain crypto assets, a significant amount of development work is required and there is no guarantee that we will be able to integrate successfully with any existing or future crypto asset, or that such integration will be secure against blockchain-level exploits or vulnerabilities. In addition, such integration may introduce software errors or weaknesses into our platform, including our existing infrastructure. Even if such integration is initially successful, any number of technical changes, software upgrades, soft or hard forks, cybersecurity incidents, or other changes to the underlying blockchain network may occur from time to time, causing incompatibility, technical issues, disruptions, or security to our platform. If we are to identify, troubleshoot and any such issues , we may no longer be to support such crypto asset, our customers’ assets may be frozen or , the security of our hot, warm, or cold wallets may be compromised, and our platform and technical infrastructure may be affected, all of which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If miners or validators of any supported crypto asset demand high transaction fees, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We charge blockchain transaction fees when a customer sends certain crypto assets from their Coinbase account to a non-Coinbase account. We estimate the blockchain transaction fee based on the cost that we will incur to process the withdrawal transaction on the underlying blockchain network. In addition, we also pay blockchain transaction fees when we move crypto assets for various operational purposes, such as when we transfer crypto assets between our hot and cold wallets, for which we do not charge our customers. However, blockchain transaction fees have been and may continue to be unpredictable. If the block rewards for miners on any blockchain network are not sufficiently high to incentivize miners, miners may demand higher transaction fees, or collude to reject low transaction fees
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and force users to pay higher fees. Although we generally attempt to pass blockchain transaction fees relating to customer withdrawals through to our customers, we have in the past incurred, and expect to incur from time to time, losses associated with the payment of blockchain transaction fees in excess of what we charge our customers, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Future developments regarding the treatment of crypto assets for U.S. and foreign tax purposes could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Due to the nature of crypto assets and the absence of comprehensive legal and tax guidance with respect to crypto asset products and transactions, many significant aspects of the U.S. and foreign tax treatment of transactions involving crypto assets, such as the purchase and sale of crypto assets on our platform, as well as the provision of blockchain rewards and other crypto asset incentives and rewards products, are uncertain, and it is unclear whether, when and what guidance may be issued in the future on the treatment of crypto asset transactions for U.S. and foreign tax purposes.
In 2014, the IRS released Notice 2014-21, discussing certain aspects of “virtual currency” for U.S. federal income tax purposes and, in particular, stating that such virtual currency (i) is “property,” (ii) is not “currency” for purposes of the rules relating to foreign currency gain or loss, and (iii) may be held as a capital asset. From time to time, the IRS has released other guidance relating to the tax treatment of virtual currency or crypto assets reflecting the IRS’s position on certain issues. The IRS has not addressed many other significant aspects of the U.S. federal income tax treatment of crypto assets and related transactions.
There continues to be uncertainty with respect to the timing, character, and amount of income inclusions for various crypto asset transactions including, but not limited to lending and borrowing crypto assets, staking, and other crypto asset incentives and products that we offer. Although we believe our treatment of crypto asset transactions for federal income tax purposes is consistent with existing positions from the IRS and/or existing U.S. federal income tax principles, because of the advances in crypto asset innovations and the increasing variety and complexity of crypto asset transactions and products, it is possible the IRS and various U.S. states may disagree with our treatment of certain crypto asset offerings for U.S. tax purposes, which could adversely affect our customers and the vitality of our business. Similar uncertainties exist in the foreign markets in which we operate with respect to direct and indirect taxes, and these uncertainties and potential adverse interpretations of tax law could impact the amount of tax we and our non-U.S. customers are required to pay, and the vitality of our platforms outside of the United States.
There can be no assurance that the IRS, U.S. state revenue agencies, or other foreign tax authorities, will not alter their respective positions with respect to crypto assets in the future or that a court would uphold the treatment set forth in existing positions. It also is unclear what additional tax authority positions, regulations, or legislation may be issued in the future on the treatment of existing crypto asset transactions and future crypto asset innovations under U.S. federal, U.S. state, or foreign tax law. Any such developments could result in adverse tax consequences for holders of crypto assets and could have an adverse effect on the value of crypto assets and the broader crypto assets markets. Future technological and operational developments that may arise with respect to crypto assets may increase the uncertainty with respect to the treatment of crypto assets for U.S. and foreign tax purposes. The uncertainty regarding tax treatment of crypto asset transactions impacts our customers, and could impact our business, both domestically and abroad.
Our tax information reporting obligations with respect to crypto transactions may be subject to further scrutiny in light of the implementation of the U.S. and global broker reporting regime for tax reporting.
In 2021, the U.S. Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the “IIJA”), providing that brokers would be responsible for reporting to the IRS the transactions of their customers in digital assets, including transfers to other exchanges or to digital asset wallets not connected to any exchange.
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In 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department and the IRS released final regulations and issued other administrative guidance on tax information reporting for digital assets (collectively, the “Final Regulations”) that are applicable, in certain cases as of January 1, 2025.
Although we believe we are compliant with U.S. tax reporting and withholding requirements, our compliance with the Final Regulations, including but not limited to U.S. onboarding requirements through Forms W-9 and W-8, backup withholding, non-resident alien withholding, and Form 1099 and Form 1042-S reporting obligations, may be subject to scrutiny and may be challenged. There is a risk that we may not properly implement processes and procedures necessary to comply with the Final Regulations, may misinterpret the IIJA, the Final Regulations, or the administrative guidance, or may experience disruptions in the systems recently built. If the IRS determines that we are not in compliance with our tax reporting or withholding obligations, significant taxes and penalties may be imposed, which could adversely affect our financial position. The Final Regulations require us to invest substantially in new compliance processes and procedures, which also could adversely affect our financial position. Further, the IRS may issue additional guidance with respect to tax reporting and withholding obligations, which could impose additional burdens on us and result in significant taxes and that could affect our financial position.
Similarly, new rules for reporting crypto assets under the global “common reporting standard” (CRS) and the “crypto-asset reporting framework” (CARF) have been implemented on our operations, creating new obligations and a need to continue investing in new onboarding and reporting infrastructure. Such rules have been adopted by numerous member and observer states of the “Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development” and by the European Commission on behalf of the member states of the European Union. These new rules may give rise to potential liabilities or disclosure requirements for prior customer arrangements and operational challenges that affect how we onboard our customers and report their transactions to taxing authorities. Additionally, the European Union has implemented a directive, commonly referred to as “CESOP” (the Central Electronic System of Payment information), which requires payment service providers in the European Union to report cross-border fiat transactions to taxing authorities on a quarterly basis. Any actual or perceived failure by us to comply with the above or any other tax and financial regulations that apply to our operations could harm our business, lead to customer attrition, and adversely affect our financial position.
The nature of our business requires the application of complex financial accounting rules, and there is limited guidance from accounting standard setting bodies on certain topics. If financial accounting standards undergo significant changes, our operating results could fluctuate.
The accounting rules and regulations that we must comply with are complex and subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “FASB”), the SEC, and various other bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. Recent actions and public comments from the FASB and the SEC have focused on the integrity of financial reporting and internal controls and many companies’ accounting policies are being subjected to heightened scrutiny by regulators and the public. Further, there remains relatively limited precedent for the financial accounting of crypto assets and related valuation and revenue recognition, even while the crypto ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, leading in some cases to related accounting standards becoming quickly outdated. Moreover, a change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported financial results, and may even affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement or effectiveness of a change. For example, on March 31, 2022, the staff of the SEC issued Staff Accounting Bulletin (“SAB”) No. 121 (“SAB 121”), which represented a significant change regarding how a company safeguarding crypto assets held for its platform users reports such crypto assets on its balance sheet and required retrospective application as of January 1, 2022. In January 2025, the staff of the SEC issued SAB No. 122 (“SAB 122”), which rescinds the previously-issued interpretive guidance included within SAB 121. We adopted SAB 122 as of December 31, 2024 on a retrospective basis.
Uncertainties in or changes to regulatory or financial accounting standards could result in the need to change our accounting methods and may retroactively affect previously reported results and impair our
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ability to provide timely and accurate financial information, which could adversely affect our financial statements, result in a loss of investor confidence, and our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Government Regulation and Privacy Matters
The onchain economy is novel. As a result, policymakers are considering what a regulatory regime for crypto would look like and the elements that would serve as the foundation for such a regime. This less developed consideration of crypto may harm our ability to effectively react to proposed legislation and regulation of crypto assets or crypto asset platforms adverse to our business.
As crypto assets have grown in both popularity and market size, various U.S. federal, state, and local and foreign governmental organizations, consumer agencies and public advocacy groups have been examining the operations of crypto networks, users and platforms, with a focus on how crypto assets can be used to launder the proceeds of illegal activities, fund criminal or terrorist enterprises, and simultaneously how to ensure the safety and soundness of platforms and other service providers that hold crypto assets for users. Many of these entities have called for heightened regulatory oversight, and have issued consumer advisories describing the risks posed by crypto assets to users and investors.
Competitors, including traditional financial services, have spent years cultivating professional relationships with relevant policymakers on behalf of their industry so that those policymakers may understand that industry, the current legal landscape affecting that industry, and the specific policy proposals that could be implemented in order to responsibly develop that industry. The lobbyists working for these competitors have similarly spent years developing and working to implement strategies to advance these industries. Members of the onchain economy have started to engage policymakers directly and with the help of external advisors and lobbyists. For example, in order to advance our mission, in February 2022 we launched our Coinbase Innovation Political Action Committee to support crypto-forward political candidates and initiatives. Further, in December 2023, we together with a number of other crypto and blockchain market participants supported the launch of the Fairshake Political Action Committee, which supports political candidates who support crypto and blockchain innovation or against political candidates who do not support crypto and blockchain innovation. However, these efforts to educate policymakers and advocate for sensible crypto regulation are nascent compared to more established industries, and may be perceived unfavorably by investors and the public and have an impact on our brand and reputation. As a result, new laws and regulations may be proposed and adopted in the United States and internationally, or existing laws and regulations may be interpreted in new ways, that the onchain economy or crypto asset platforms, which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our Consolidated Balance Sheets may not contain sufficient amounts or types of regulatory capital to meet the changing requirements of our various regulators worldwide, which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are required to possess sufficient financial soundness and strength to adequately support our regulated subsidiaries. We may from time to time incur indebtedness and other obligations which could make it more difficult to meet these capitalization requirements or any additional regulatory requirements. In addition, although we are not a bank holding company for purposes of United States law or the law of any other jurisdiction, as a global provider of financial services and in light of the changing regulatory environment in various jurisdictions, we could become subject to new capital requirements introduced or imposed by the United States and international regulators. Any change or increase in these regulatory requirements could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
As a financial institution licensed to, among other things, engage in money transmission in the United States, to conduct virtual currency business activity in New York, Dubai and Bermuda, and issue electronic money in the United Kingdom and the European Union, we are subject to strict rules governing
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how we manage and hold customer fiat currency, stablecoins, and crypto assets. We maintain complex treasury operations to manage and move customer fiat currency, stablecoins, and crypto assets across our platforms and to comply with regulatory requirements. However, it is possible we may experience errors in fiat currency, stablecoin, and crypto asset handling, accounting, and regulatory reporting that lead us to be out of compliance with these requirements. In addition, regulators may increase the amount of capital reserves that we are required to maintain for our operations, as has happened in the past, which may lead to sanctions, penalties, changes to our business operations, or the revocation of licenses. Frequent launch of new products and services, margin trading, lending functions, and the addition of new payment rails increase these risks.
Many of the crypto assets and other products, such as event contracts, in which we facilitate trading are subject to regulatory authority by the CFTC. Any fraudulent or manipulative activity in a crypto asset or other regulated product, including event contracts, occurring on our platform could subject us to increased regulatory scrutiny, regulatory enforcement, and litigation.
The CFTC has stated and judicial decisions involving CFTC enforcement actions have confirmed that at least some crypto assets, including Bitcoin, ether, litecoin, and stablecoins, such as USDC, USDT and BUSD, fall within the definition of a “commodity” under the U.S. Commodities Exchange Act of 1936 (the “CEA”). As a result, the CFTC has general enforcement authority to police against manipulation and fraud in at least some spot crypto asset markets. From time to time, manipulation, fraud, and other forms of improper trading by market participants have resulted in, and may in the future result in, CFTC investigations, inquiries, enforcement action, and similar actions by other regulators, government agencies, and civil litigation. Such investigations, inquiries, enforcement actions, and litigation may cause us to incur substantial costs and could result in negative publicity.
Furthermore, the CTFC has regulatory authority over certain product offerings, including event contracts, which are regulated as “swaps” under the CEA. This classification subjects us to the CFTC’s supervisory and enforcement oversight, including supervisory requirements to prevent manipulation, fraud and other forms of improper trading in these markets. As a result, the offering and facilitation of these contracts on our platform could result in increased regulatory scrutiny, investigations, and enforcement actions, which may cause us to incur substantial costs and expose us to civil liability, fines, and reputational harm. Some states have taken the position that the states and not the CFTC should be the appropriate regulator for sports-related event contracts and that question is the subject of ongoing litigation. See the Risk Factor titled “ We are subject to an extensive, highly-evolving and uncertain regulatory landscape and any adverse changes to, or our to comply with, any laws and regulations could affect our brand, reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition. ” for additional information.
Certain transactions in crypto assets may constitute “retail commodity transactions” subject to regulation by the CFTC as futures contracts. If crypto asset transactions we facilitate are deemed to be such retail commodity transactions, we would be subject to additional regulatory requirements, licenses and approvals, and potentially face regulatory enforcement, civil liability, and significant increased compliance and operational costs.
Any transaction in a commodity, including a crypto asset, entered into with or offered to retail investors using leverage, margin, or other financing arrangements (a “retail commodity transaction”) is subject to CFTC regulation as a futures contract unless such transaction results in actual delivery within 28 days. The meaning of “actual delivery” has been the subject of commentary and debate. To the extent that crypto asset transactions that we facilitate or facilitated are deemed retail commodity transactions, including pursuant to current or subsequent rulemaking or guidance by the CFTC, we may be subject to additional regulatory requirements and oversight, and we could be subject to judicial or administrative sanctions if we do not or did not at a relevant time possess appropriate registrations. The CFTC has previously brought enforcement actions against entities engaged in retail commodity transactions without appropriate registrations, as well as recent enforcement settled orders against developers of decentralized platforms.
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Particular crypto assets or transactions therein, or other contracts or products we offer, could be deemed “commodity interests” (e.g., futures, options, swaps) or security-based swaps subject to regulation by the CFTC or SEC, respectively. If a crypto asset that we facilitate trading in is deemed a commodity interest or a security-based swap, we would be subject to additional regulatory requirements, registrations and approvals, and potentially face regulatory enforcement, civil liability, and significant increased compliance and operational costs.
Commodity interests, as such term is defined by the CEA and CFTC rules and regulations, are subject to more extensive supervisory oversight by the CFTC, including registrations of entities engaged in, and platforms offering, commodity interest transactions. This CFTC authority extends to crypto asset futures contracts and swaps, including transactions that are based on current and future prices of crypto assets and indices of crypto assets. To the extent that a crypto asset in which we facilitate or facilitated trading or transactions in a crypto asset which we facilitate or facilitated are deemed to fall within the definition of a commodity interest, including pursuant to subsequent rulemaking or guidance by the CFTC, we may be subject to additional regulatory requirements and oversight and could be subject to judicial or administrative sanctions if we do not or did not at a relevant time possess appropriate registrations as an exchange (for example, as a designated contract market for trading futures or options on futures, or as a swaps execution facility for trading swaps) or as a registered intermediary (for example, as a futures commission merchant or introducing broker). Such actions could result in injunctions, cease and desist orders, as well as civil monetary penalties, fines, and disgorgement, as well as reputational . The CFTC has previously brought enforcement actions entities engaged in crypto asset activities for to obtain appropriate exchange, execution facility and intermediary registrations.
Furthermore, the CFTC and the SEC have jointly adopted regulations defining “security-based swaps,” which include swaps based on single securities and narrow-based indices of securities. If a crypto asset is deemed to be a security, certain transactions referencing that crypto asset could constitute a security-based swap. A crypto asset or transaction therein that is based on or references a security or index of securities, whether or not such securities are themselves crypto assets, could also constitute a security-based swap. To the extent that a crypto asset in which we facilitate or have facilitated trading or transactions in a crypto asset which we facilitate or have facilitated are deemed to fall within the definition of a security-based swap, including pursuant to subsequent rulemaking or guidance by the CFTC or SEC, we may be subject to additional regulatory requirements and oversight by the SEC and could be subject to judicial or administrative sanctions if we do not or did not a relevant time possess appropriate registrations as an exchange (for example, as a security-based swaps execution facility) or as a registered intermediary (for example, as a security-based swap dealer or broker-dealer). This could result in injunctions, cease and desist orders, as well as civil monetary penalties, fines, and disgorgement, as well as reputational .
We collect and process a large amount of sensitive customer data. Any real or perceived improper use of, disclosure of, or access to such data could harm our reputation, as well as adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We collect and process large amounts of sensitive data, including personal data related to our customers and their transactions, such as their names, addresses, social security numbers, visa information, copies of government-issued identification, biometric facial recognition data (from scanning of photographs for identity verification and fraud prevention purposes), trading data, tax identification, and bank account information. We face risks, including to our reputation, in the processing and protection of this data, and these risks will increase as our business continues to expand, including through our acquisition of, and investment in, other companies and technologies. Federal, state, and international laws and regulations governing privacy, data protection, and e-commerce transactions require us to safeguard our customers’, employees’, and service providers’ personal data.
We have administrative, technical, and physical security measures and controls in place and maintain a robust information security program. However, our security measures, those of our vendors or service providers, or the security measures of companies we acquire, may be inadequate or breached as a result
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of third-party action, employee or service provider error, malfeasance, malware, phishing, hacking attacks, system error, trickery, advances in computer capabilities, new discoveries in the field of cryptography, inadequate facility security or otherwise, and, as a result, someone may be able to obtain unauthorized access to sensitive information, including personal data, on our systems. We could be the target of a cybersecurity incident, which could result in harm to our reputation and financial losses. Additionally, our customers have been and could be targeted in cybersecurity incidents like an account takeover, which could result in harm to our reputation and financial losses. For example, as previously disclosed on a Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the SEC on May 15, 2025, a actor obtained information about certain customer accounts and internal documentation, and used that information for social-engineering attempts. No passwords or private keys were compromised as a result of this . We continue to face risks related to this , including to our reputation, governmental and regulatory , and ongoing .
Our future success depends on the reliability and security of our platform. To the extent that the measures we, any companies we acquire, or our third-party service providers, vendors, or business partners have taken prove to be insufficient or inadequate, or to the extent we discover a security breach suffered by a company we acquire following the closing of such acquisition, we may become subject to litigation, breach notification obligations, or regulatory or administrative sanctions, which could result in significant fines, penalties, damages, harm to our reputation, or loss of customers. If our own confidential business information or sensitive customer information were improperly disclosed, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected. Additionally, a party who our security measures could, among other effects, appropriate customer information or other proprietary data, cause in our operations, or customers to hacks, viruses, and other .
The increasing sophistication of AI poses a greater risk of identity fraud, as malicious actors may exploit various AI technologies to create increasingly convincing false identities, transaction records, or attempt to manipulate our verification processes. This necessitates ongoing enhancements to our verification systems and security protocols to prevent unauthorized access and protect sensitive information. Failure to manage these risks or to implement effective countermeasures could lead to unauthorized transactions, financial losses, reputational damage and increased regulatory scrutiny.
Depending on the nature of the information compromised, in the event of a data breach or other unauthorized access to our customer data, we may also have obligations to notify customers and regulators about the incident, and we may need to provide some form of remedy, such as a subscription to credit monitoring services, pay significant fines to one or more regulators, or pay compensation in connection with a class-action settlement. Breach notification laws continue to evolve and may be inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another. In the United States, the SEC has adopted rules for mandatory disclosure of material cybersecurity incidents suffered by public companies, as well as cybersecurity governance and risk management. Complying with these obligations could cause us to incur substantial costs and could increase negative publicity surrounding any incident that compromises customer data. Any failure or perceived by us to comply with these laws may also subject us to enforcement action or , any of which could our business. Additionally, the financial exposure from the events referenced above could either not be insured or not be fully covered through any insurance that we may maintain, and there can be no assurance that the of liability in any of our contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from liabilities or as a result of the events referenced above. Any of the foregoing could affect our business, reputation, operating results, and financial condition.
Furthermore, we may be required to disclose personal data pursuant to demands from individuals, regulators, government agencies, and law enforcement agencies in various jurisdictions with conflicting privacy and security laws, which could result in a breach of privacy and data protection policies, notices, laws, rules, court orders, and regulations. Additionally, changes in the laws and regulations that govern our collection, use, and disclosure of customer data could impose additional requirements with respect to
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the retention and security of customer data, could limit our marketing activities, and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are subject to laws, regulations, and industry requirements related to data privacy, data protection and information security, and user protection across different markets where we conduct our business, including in the United States, European Economic Area (the “EEA”), and Asia-Pacific region, and such laws, regulations, and industry requirements are constantly evolving and changing. Any actual or perceived failure to comply with such laws, regulations, and industry requirements, or our privacy policies, could harm our business.
Various local, state, federal, and international laws, directives, and regulations apply to our collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer, and processing of personal data. These data protection and privacy laws and regulations are subject to uncertainty and continue to evolve in ways that could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. These laws have a substantial impact on our operations both outside and in the United States, either directly or as a data processor and handler for various offshore entities.
In the United States, state and federal lawmakers and regulatory authorities have increased their attention on the collection and use of user data and various laws and regulations apply to the collection, processing, disclosure, and security of certain types of data, including the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (“GLBA”) and state laws relating to privacy and data security. GLBA requires financial institutions to explain their information sharing practices to their customers and to safeguard sensitive data. Additionally, the Federal Trade Commission and many state attorneys general are interpreting federal and state consumer protection laws as imposing standards for the online collection, use, dissemination, and security of data. For example, California has enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act (the “CCPA”).
The CCPA requires covered companies to, among other things, provide disclosures to individuals in California, and affords such individuals privacy rights such as the ability to opt-out of certain sales of personal information and expanded rights to access and require deletion of their personal information, opt out of certain personal information sharing, and receive detailed information about how their personal information is collected, used, and shared. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for security breaches that may increase security breach litigation.
In addition, other U.S. states have proposed or enacted laws that contain obligations similar to the CCPA that have taken effect or will take effect in coming years. We cannot fully predict the impact of recently proposed or enacted laws or regulations on our business or operations, but compliance may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies incurring costs and expense. Further, to the extent multiple state-level laws are introduced with inconsistent or conflicting standards, it may require costly and difficult efforts to achieve compliance with such laws. Our failure or perceived failure to comply with state privacy laws or regulations passed in the future could adversely affect our business, including how we use personal information, operating results, and financial condition.
Additionally, many foreign countries and governmental bodies, including Australia, Brazil, Kenya, the European Union, India, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and numerous other jurisdictions in which we may operate or conduct our business, have laws and regulations concerning the collection, use, processing, storage, and deletion of personal data obtained from their residents or by businesses operating within their jurisdiction. These laws and regulations often are more restrictive than those in the United States. Such laws and regulations may require companies to implement new privacy and security policies, permit individuals to access, correct, and delete personal data stored or maintained by such companies, inform individuals of security breaches that affect their personal data, require that certain types of data be retained on local servers within these jurisdictions, and, in some cases, obtain individuals’ affirmative opt-in consent to collect and use personal data for certain purposes.
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We are subject to, or may become subject to, the E.U.’s and the U.K.’s General Data Protection Regulation (collectively, the “GDPR”), the E.U. ePrivacy Directive (including its national implementations), the E.U. Data Act, the E.U. Digital Operational Resilience Act and other E.U. and U.K. laws that regulate personal data, non-personal data, and cybersecurity operations. The most well-known of such laws, the GDPR, imposes stringent privacy and personal data protection requirements and could increase the risk of non-compliance and the costs of providing our products and services in a compliant manner. A breach of the GDPR could result in regulatory investigations, reputational damage, fines and sanctions, orders to cease or change our processing of our data, enforcement notices, or assessment notices (for a compulsory audit). For example, if regulators assert that we have failed to comply with the GDPR, we may be subject to fines of up to €20 million in the E.U. (£17.5 million in the U.K.) or 4% of our worldwide annual revenue, whichever is greater. We may also face civil including representative actions and other class action type (where individuals have ), potentially amounting to significant compensation or liabilities, as well as associated costs, of internal resources, and reputational .
The GDPR and Swiss data protection laws impose strict rules on the transfer of personal data out of the E.U., U.K., or Switzerland to a “third country,” including the United States, unless particular compliance mechanisms are implemented. The mechanisms that we and many other companies rely upon for such data transfers (for example, standard contractual clauses or the E.U.-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (“DPF”) and the U.K. extension to the DPF) are the subject of legal challenge, regulatory interpretation, and judicial decisions. In the E.U. and other markets, potential new rules and restrictions on the flow of data across borders could increase the cost and complexity of doing business in those regions.
While we maintain E.U.-U.S., Swiss-U.S. and U.K.-U.S. DPF certification, we still rely on the standard contractual clauses for intercompany data transfers from the European Union, Switzerland, and the U.K. to the United States. As supervisory authorities continue to issue further guidance on personal data, we could suffer additional costs, complaints, or regulatory investigations or fines, and if we are otherwise unable to transfer personal data between and among countries and regions in which we operate, it could affect the manner in which we provide our services, the geographical location or segregation of our relevant systems and operations and could adversely affect our financial results.
We are also subject to evolving privacy laws on cookies and e-marketing and online behavioral advertising. As regulators become increasingly focused on compliance, this could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, negatively impact our efforts to understand users, adversely affect our margins, increase costs, and subject us to additional liabilities.
There is a risk that as we expand, we may assume liabilities for breaches experienced by the companies we acquire. Additionally, there are potentially inconsistent world-wide government regulations pertaining to data protection and privacy. Despite our efforts to comply with applicable laws, regulations and other obligations relating to privacy, data protection, and information security, it is possible that our practices, offerings, or platform could fail, or be alleged to fail to meet applicable requirements. For instance, the overall regulatory framework governing the application of privacy laws to blockchain technology is still highly undeveloped and likely to evolve. Further there are also changes in the regulatory landscape relating to new and evolving technologies. Our failure, or the failure by our third-party providers or partners, to comply with applicable laws or regulations and to prevent unauthorized access to, or use or release of personal data, or the perception that any of the foregoing types of failure has occurred, even if , could subject us to audits, inquiries, whistleblower , media coverage, , , or civil sanctions, our reputation, or result in or proceedings by governmental agencies and private and , any of which could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
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Issues relating to the development and use of AI in our business could result in reputational harm, competitive harm, and legal liability, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We currently leverage internally developed and third-party developed AI into certain aspects of our business and we anticipate that AI will become increasingly important to our operations in the future. Our competitors and other third parties may incorporate AI into their businesses or offerings more quickly or more successfully than us, which could impair our ability to compete effectively and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our use of AI may result in new or expanded risks and liabilities, including due to enhanced governmental or regulatory regulation and scrutiny, litigation, compliance issues, ethical concerns, confidentiality or security risks, as well as other factors that could adversely affect our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition. Evolving legal frameworks and guidance, such as the E.U. AI Act, other international regimes, and emerging developments with respect to U.S. federal and state regulations, rules, and industry standards governing AI may require us and our third-party developers to incur significant costs to modify, maintain, or align our business practices, services, and solutions to comply with rules and regulations, the nature of which cannot be determined at this time and may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
There can be no assurance that the use of AI and machine learning solutions and features will enhance our products or services, produce the intended results, or be beneficial to our business, including our efficiency. Consumer and societal attitudes toward AI are evolving and there is a risk that customers, regulators or the public may perceive AI technologies negatively. Concerns about automation, automated decision making, privacy, security, transparency, or other ethical considerations could reduce trust in our products and services or deter customer adoption of AI-enabled features in our products or services. AI machine learning systems are complex and may be flawed, insufficient, reflect unwanted forms of bias, or contain errors or inadequacies that are not easily detectable, or may cause or outputs that are , including with respect to financial data, do not match our business goals, do not comply with our policies or those of our regulators, or are otherwise are with our brand. If the output that the AI applications we use to produce such output is, or is to be, , , or biased, our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
Risks Related to Third Parties
Our current and future services are dependent on payment networks and acquiring processors, and any changes to their rules or practices could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We rely on financial institutions and other payment processors to process customers’ payments in connection with the purchase of crypto assets on our platform and we pay these providers fees for their services. From time to time, payment networks have increased, and may increase in the future, the interchange fees and assessments that they charge for transactions that use their networks. Payment networks have imposed, and may impose in the future, special fees on the purchase of crypto assets, including on our platform, which could negatively impact us and significantly increase our costs. Our payment card processors may have the right to pass any increases in interchange fees and assessments on to us, and may impose additional use charges which would increase our operating costs and reduce our operating income. We could attempt to pass these increases along to our customers, but this strategy might result in the loss of customers to our competitors that may not pass along the increases, thereby reducing our revenue and earnings. If competitive practices prevent us from passing along the higher fees to our customers in the future, we may have to absorb all or a portion of such increases, thereby increasing our operating costs and reducing our earnings.
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We may also be directly or indirectly liable to the payment networks for rule violations. Payment networks set and interpret their network operating rules and have alleged from time to time that various aspects of our business model violate these operating rules. If such allegations are not resolved favorably, they may result in significant fines and penalties, require changes in our business practices, or result in the loss of their services for parts of our business, any of which may be costly and adversely affect our business. The payment networks could adopt new operating rules or interpret or reinterpret existing rules that we or our processors might find difficult or even impossible to follow, or costly to implement. As a result, we could our ability to give customers the option of using cards to fund their purchases or the choice of currency in which they would like their card to be charged. If we are to accept cards or are limited in our ability to do so, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
We depend on major mobile operating systems and third-party platforms for the distribution of certain products. If Google Play, the Apple App Store, or other platforms prevent customers from downloading our apps, our ability to grow may be hindered and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We rely upon third-party platforms for the distribution of certain products and services. Our Coinbase and the Base App (formerly Coinbase Wallet) apps are provided as free applications through both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, and are also accessible via mobile and traditional websites. The Google Play Store and Apple App Store are global application distribution platforms and the main distribution channels for our apps. As such, the promotion, distribution, and operation of our apps are subject to the respective platforms’ terms and policies for application developers, which are very broad and subject to frequent changes and re-interpretation. Further, these distribution platforms often contain restrictions related to crypto assets that are uncertain, broadly construed, and can limit the nature and scope of services that can be offered. For example, Apple App Store’s restrictions related to crypto assets have disrupted the proposed launch of many features within the Coinbase and the Base App apps, including NFT transfer services and access to decentralized applications. If our products are found to be in violation of any such terms and conditions, we may no longer be able to offer our products through such third-party platforms. There can be no guarantee that third-party platforms will continue to support our product offerings, or that customers will be able to continue to use our products. For example, in December 2019, we were instructed by Apple to remove certain features relating to decentralized applications from our application to comply with the Apple App Store’s policies. Any changes, bugs, technical or regulatory issues with third-party platforms, our relationships with mobile manufacturers and carriers, or changes to their terms of service or policies could our products’ functionalities, reduce or eliminate our ability to distribute our products, give preferential treatment to competitive products, limit our ability to deliver high quality offerings, or impose fees or other charges, any of which could affect our product usage and affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property rights are valuable, and any inability to protect them could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business depends in large part on our proprietary technology and our brand. We rely on, and expect to continue to rely on, a combination of trademark, trade dress, patents, domain name, copyright, and trade secrets, as well as confidentiality and license agreements with our employees, contractors, consultants, and third parties with whom we have relationships, to establish and protect our brand and other intellectual property rights. However, our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights may not be sufficient or effective. Our proprietary technology and trade secrets could be lost through misappropriation or breach of our confidentiality and license agreements, and any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged, which could result in them being narrowed in scope or declared invalid or unenforceable. There can be no assurance that our intellectual property rights will be sufficient to protect against others
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offering products, services, or technologies that are substantially similar to ours and that compete with our business.
We do not intend to monetize our patents or attempt to block third parties from competing with us by asserting our patents offensively, but our ability to successfully defend intellectual property challenges from competitors and other parties may depend, in part and where permissible, on our ability to counter-assert our patents defensively. Effective protection of our intellectual property may be expensive and difficult to maintain, both in terms of application and registration costs as well as the costs of defending and enforcing those rights. As we have grown, we have sought to obtain and protect our intellectual property rights in an increasing number of countries, a process that can be expensive and may not always be successful. In some instances, patent applications or patents may be abandoned or allowed to lapse, resulting in partial or complete loss of patent rights in a relevant jurisdiction. Further, intellectual property protection may not be available to us in every country in which our products and services are available, and the regulatory landscape in such jurisdictions may evolve rapidly, to an change in the ability to obtain and enforce intellectual property rights in these jurisdictions. For example, some foreign countries have compulsory licensing laws under which a patent owner must grant licenses to third parties. In addition, many countries limit the enforceability of patents certain third parties, including government agencies or government contractors. In these countries, patents may provide limited or no . We may also agree to license our patents to third parties as part of various patent pools and open patent projects. Those licenses may our ability, though, to counter-assert our patents certain parties that may bring us.
We have been, and in the future may be, sued by third parties for alleged infringement of their proprietary rights.
In recent years, there has been considerable patent, copyright, trademark, domain name, trade secret, and other intellectual property development activity in the onchain economy, as well as litigation, based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property, including by large financial institutions. The evolving climate and new policy initiatives at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) related to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board are creating a more challenging environment to invalidate patents that are or can be asserted against us. Furthermore, individuals and groups can purchase patents and other intellectual property assets for the purpose of making claims of infringement to extract settlements from companies like ours. Finally, the USPTO has recently implemented and may continue to implement changes that expand the subject matter considered eligible for patent protection, which may make it easier for competitors and other adverse parties to obtain patents related to our platform and technology.
Our use of third-party intellectual property rights also may be subject to claims of infringement or misappropriation. We cannot guarantee that our internally developed or acquired technologies and content do not or will not infringe the intellectual property rights of others. From time to time, our competitors or other third parties may claim that we are infringing upon or misappropriating their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing upon such rights. Any claims or litigation could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if successfully asserted against us, could require that we pay substantial damages or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our products or services or using certain technologies, force us to implement expensive or less work-arounds, or impose other terms. We expect that the occurrence of is likely to grow as the crypto assets market grows and matures. Accordingly, our exposure to resulting from could increase and this could further exhaust our financial and management resources. Further, during the course of any , we may make announcements regarding the results of hearings and motions, and other interim developments. If securities analysts and investors regard these announcements as , the market price of our Class A common stock may . Even if intellectual property do not result in or are resolved in our favor, these , and the time and resources necessary to them, could the resources of our management and require significant expenditures. Any of the foregoing could prevent us from competing effectively and could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
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Our platform contains third-party open source software components, and failure to comply with the terms of the underlying open source software licenses could harm our business.
Our platform contains software modules licensed to us by third-party authors under “open source” licenses. We also make certain of our own software available to users for free under various open source licenses. Use and distribution of open source software may entail greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide support, warranties, indemnification or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. In addition, the public availability of such software may make it easier for others to compromise our platform.
Some open source licenses contain requirements that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon the type of open source software we use, or grant other licenses to our intellectual property. If we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner, we could, under certain open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software to the public. This would allow our competitors to create similar offerings with lower development effort and time and ultimately could result in a loss of our competitive advantages. Alternatively, to avoid the public release of the affected portions of our source code, we could be required to expend substantial time and resources to re-engineer some or all of our software.
We have not recently conducted an extensive audit of our use of open source software and, as a result, we cannot assure you that our processes for controlling our use of open source software in our platform are, or will be, effective. If we are held to have breached or failed to fully comply with all the terms and conditions of an open source software license, we could face litigation, infringement claims, or other liabilities. Likewise, we may be required to seek costly licenses from third parties to continue providing our offerings on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our platform, to discontinue or delay the provision of our offerings if re-engineering cannot be accomplished on a timely basis or to make generally available, in source code form, our proprietary code, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Moreover, the terms of many open source licenses have not been interpreted by U.S. or foreign courts. As a result, there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in a way that could impose conditions or restrictions on our ability to provide or distribute our platform. From time to time, there have been the ownership of open source software companies that incorporate open source software into their solutions. As a result, we could be subject to lawsuits by parties ownership of what we believe to be open source software.
Risks Related to Our Employees and Other Service Providers
The loss of one or more of our key personnel, or our failure to attract and retain other highly qualified personnel in the future, could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We operate in a relatively new industry that is not widely understood and requires highly skilled and technical personnel. We believe that our future success is highly dependent on the talents and contributions of our senior management team, including Mr. Armstrong, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, members of our executive team, and other key employees across product, engineering, risk management, finance, compliance and legal, and marketing. Our future success depends on our ability to attract, develop, motivate, and retain highly qualified and skilled employees. The pool of qualified talent in our industry is extremely limited, particularly with respect to executive talent, engineering, risk management, and financial regulatory expertise. We face intense competition for qualified individuals from numerous software and other technology companies. To attract and retain key personnel, we incur significant costs, including salaries and benefits and equity incentives. Even so, these measures may not be enough to attract and retain the personnel we require to operate our business effectively. The loss of even a few key employees or senior leaders, or an inability to attract, retain and motivate additional highly skilled employees required for the planned expansion of our business could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition and our ability to grow.
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Our culture emphasizes innovation, and if we cannot maintain this culture, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We believe that our entrepreneurial and innovative corporate culture has been a key contributor to our success. We encourage and empower our employees to develop and launch new and innovative products and services, which we believe is essential to attracting high quality talent, partners, and developers, as well as serving the best, long-term interests of our company. If we cannot maintain this culture, we could lose the innovation, creativity and teamwork that has been integral to our business. Additionally, from time to time, we realign our resources and talent to implement stage-appropriate business strategies, including furloughs, layoffs, or reductions in force. In such cases, we may find it difficult to prevent a negative effect on employee morale or attrition beyond our planned reduction, in which case our products and services may and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
In the event of employee or service provider misconduct or error, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We have and may in the future experience employee or service provider misconduct. Employee or service provider misconduct or error could subject us to legal liability, financial losses, and regulatory sanctions and could seriously harm our reputation and negatively affect our business. Such misconduct could include engaging in improper or unauthorized transactions or activities, misappropriation of customer funds, insider trading and misappropriation of information, failing to supervise other employees or service providers, improperly using confidential information, as well as improper trading activity such as spoofing, layering, wash trading, manipulation and front-running. Employee or service provider , including in executing, recording, or processing transactions for customers, could us to the risk of material even if the are detected. Although we have implemented processes and procedures and provide trainings to our employees and service providers to reduce the likelihood of and , these efforts may not be . Moreover, the risk of employee or service provider or may be even for novel products and services and is compounded by the fact that many of our employees and service providers are accustomed to working at tech companies which generally do not maintain the same compliance customs and rules as financial services firms. This can lead to high risk of among employees and service providers with respect to compliance obligations, particularly including confidentiality, data access, trading, and . It is not always possible to , and the precautions we take to prevent and detect this activity may not be in all cases. If we were found to have not met our regulatory oversight and compliance and other obligations, we could be subject to regulatory sanctions, financial , restrictions on our activities for to properly identify, monitor and respond to potentially activity and our reputation. Our employees, contractors, and agents could also commit that subject us to financial for , as well as regulatory actions, or result in financial liability. Further, by regulatory or authorities of trading activities could affect our brand and reputation.
Our officers, directors, employees, and large shareholders may encounter potential conflicts of interests with respect to their positions or interests in certain crypto assets, entities, and other initiatives, which could adversely affect our business and reputation.
We frequently engage in a wide variety of transactions and maintain relationships with a significant number of crypto projects, their developers, members of their ecosystem, and investors. These transactions and relationships could create potential conflicts of interests in management decisions that we make. For instance, certain of our officers, directors, and employees are active investors in crypto projects themselves, and may make investment decisions that favor projects that they have personally invested in. Many of our large shareholders also make investments in these crypto projects. In addition, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Armstrong, is involved in a number of initiatives related to the onchain economy and more broadly. For example, Mr. Armstrong currently serves as the chief executive officer of ResearchHub Technologies, Inc., a scientific research development platform. This and
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other initiatives he is involved in could divert Mr. Armstrong’s time and attention from overseeing our business operations which could have a negative impact on our business. Moreover, we may in the future be subject to litigation as a result of his involvement with these other initiatives.
Similarly, certain of our directors, officers, employees, and large shareholders may hold crypto assets that we are considering supporting for trading on our platform, and may be more supportive of such listing notwithstanding legal, regulatory, and other issues associated with such crypto assets. While we have instituted policies and procedures to limit and mitigate such risks, there is no assurance that such policies and procedures will be effective, or that we will be able to manage such conflicts of interests adequately. If we fail to manage these conflicts of interests, or we receive unfavorable media coverage with respect to actual or perceived conflicts of interest, our business could be harmed and the brand, reputation and credibility of our company could be adversely affected.
General Risk Factors
Adverse economic conditions could adversely affect our business.
Our performance is subject to general economic conditions, and their impact on the crypto asset markets and our customers. The United States and other key international economies have experienced cyclical downturns from time to time in which economic activity declined resulting in lower consumption rates, restricted credit, reduced profitability, weaknesses in financial markets, bankruptcies, and overall uncertainty with respect to the economy. Adverse general economic conditions have impacted in the past, and may impact in the future, the onchain economy, although the extent of such impacts remains uncertain and dependent on a variety of factors, including market adoption of crypto assets, global trends in the onchain economy, central bank monetary policies, instability in the global banking system, volatility and disruptions in the capital and credit markets, and other events beyond our control. Geopolitical developments, such as trade wars and foreign exchange limitations can also increase the severity and levels of globally and increase the of global financial and crypto asset markets. For example, in the past the capital and credit markets have experienced extreme and , resulting in steep in the value of crypto assets. To the extent general economic conditions and crypto assets markets materially or for a period, our ability to generate revenue and to attract and retain customers could and our business, operating results and financial condition could be affected. Moreover, even if general economic conditions were to following any such , there is no guarantee that the onchain economy would similarly .
Further, in 2022, a number of blockchain protocols and crypto financial firms, and in particular protocols and firms involving high levels of financial leverage such as high-yield lending products or derivatives trading, suffered from insolvency and liquidity crises leading to the failure of several prominent crypto trading venues and lending platforms. Some of which are alleged or have been held to be the result of fraudulent activity by insiders, including misappropriation of customer funds and other illicit activity and internal controls failures. In connection with these failures, concerns were raised about the potential for a market condition where the failure of one company leads to the financial distress of other companies, which has the potential to the prices of assets used as collateral by other firms. If such a market condition were to become widespread in the onchain economy, we could from increased counterparty risk, including or of major customers or counterparties, which could lead to significantly reduced activity on our platform and fewer available crypto market in general. Further, selling of crypto assets by companies could lead to lower crypto asset prices and may lead to a reduction in our revenue. To the extent that conditions in the general economic and crypto asset markets were to materially , our ability to attract and retain customers may .
Actual events involving limited liquidity, defaults, non-performance or other adverse developments that affect financial institutions, transactional counterparties or other companies in the financial services industry, or the financial services industry generally, or concerns or rumors about any such events or other
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similar risks, have in the past and may in the future lead to market-wide liquidity problems. For example, in March 2023, Silvergate Capital Corp. announced it would wind down operations and liquidate Silvergate Bank. Soon after, the FDIC was appointed receiver of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. In connection with these issues and issues with other financial institutions, the prices of fiat-backed stablecoins, including USDC, were temporarily impacted and may be similarly impacted again in the future. Further, if the instability in the global banking system continues or worsens, there could be additional negative ramifications, such as additional all market-wide liquidity problems or impacted access to deposits and investments for customers of affected financial institutions and certain partners, and our business, operating results and financial condition could be adversely affected.
We are a remote-first company which subjects us to heightened operational risks.
Our employees and service providers work from home and we are a remote-first company. This subjects us to heightened operational risks. For example, technologies in our employees’ and service providers’ homes may not be as robust as in our offices and could cause the networks, information systems, applications, and other tools available to employees and service providers to be more limited or less reliable than in our offices. Further, the security systems in place at our employees’ and service providers’ homes may be less secure than those used in our offices, and while we have implemented technical and administrative safeguards to help protect our systems as our employees and service providers work from home, we may be subject to increased cybersecurity risk, which could expose us to risks of data or financial loss, and could disrupt our business operations. There is no guarantee that the data security and privacy safeguards we have put in place will be completely effective or that we will not encounter risks associated with employees and service providers accessing company data and systems remotely. We also face challenges due to the need to operate with the remote workforce and are addressing those challenges to minimize the impact on our ability to operate.
Environmental, social, and governance factors may impose additional costs and expose us to new risks.
There is focus from certain investors, regulators, employees, users and other stakeholders concerning corporate responsibility, specifically related to environmental, social, and governance matters (“ESG”) and related assurances and disclosures. Compliance with recently adopted and future ESG requirements, including the E.U.’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and California’s climate-related bills, may require the dedication of significant time and resources. If we are unable to comply with new laws and regulations or changes to existing legal or regulatory requirements concerning ESG matters, or if we fail to meet investor, industry, or stakeholder expectations and standards relating to ESG matters, our reputation may be harmed, customers may choose to refrain from using our products and services, we may be subject to fines, penalties, regulatory or other enforcement actions, and our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Changes in U.S. and foreign tax laws, as well as the application of such laws, could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We are subject to complex tax laws and regulations in the United States and a variety of foreign jurisdictions. All of these jurisdictions have in the past and may in the future make changes to their corporate income tax rates and other income tax laws which could increase our future income tax provision. For example, our future income tax obligations could be adversely affected by earnings that are lower than anticipated in jurisdictions where we have lower statutory rates and by earnings that are higher than anticipated in jurisdictions where we have higher statutory rates, by changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities, by changes in the amount of unrecognized tax benefits, or by changes in tax laws, regulations, accounting principles, or interpretations thereof, including changes with possible retroactive application or effect.
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Our determination of our tax liability is subject to review and may be challenged by applicable U.S. and foreign tax authorities. Any adverse outcome of such a challenge could harm our operating results and financial condition. The determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment and, in the ordinary course of business, there are many transactions and calculations where the ultimate tax determination is complex and uncertain. Moreover, as a multinational business, we have subsidiaries that engage in many intercompany transactions in a variety of tax jurisdictions where the ultimate tax determination is complex and uncertain. Our existing corporate structure and intercompany arrangements have been implemented in a manner we believe is in compliance with current tax laws. Furthermore, as we operate in multiple taxing jurisdictions, the application of tax laws can be subject to diverging and sometimes conflicting interpretations by taxing authorities of these jurisdictions. It is not uncommon for taxing authorities in different countries to have conflicting views with respect to, among other things, the characterization and source of income or other tax items, the manner in which the arm’s-length standard is applied for transfer pricing purposes, or with respect to the valuation of intellectual property. The taxing authorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate may our tax treatment of certain items or the methodologies we use for valuing developed technology or intercompany arrangements, which could impact our worldwide tax rate and our financial position and operating results.
Further, any changes in the tax laws governing our activities may increase our tax expense, the amount of taxes we pay, or both. For example, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “TCJA”), enacted in 2017, significantly reformed the U.S. federal tax code, reducing the U.S. federal corporate income tax rate, making sweeping changes to the rules governing international business operations, and imposing new limitations on a number of tax benefits, including deductions for business interest and the use of net operating loss carryforwards. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (the “Inflation Reduction Act”) further amended the U.S. federal tax code, imposing a 15% minimum tax on “adjusted financial statement income” of certain corporations as well as an excise tax on the repurchase or redemption of stock by certain corporations, beginning in the 2023 tax year. In addition, over the last several years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has been working on a Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (“BEPS”) Project that, if implemented, would change various aspects of the existing framework under which our tax obligations are determined in many of the countries in which we do business. As of December 2025, over 150 countries have approved a framework that imposes a minimum tax rate of 15%, among other provisions. The G7 countries, including the United States, agreed to modify the provisions of the BEPS Project which may limit its impact on us in future years. There can be no assurance that future tax law changes will not increase the rate of the corporate income tax, impose new on deductions, credits or other tax benefits, or make other changes that could impact our cash flows and affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In addition, the IRS has yet to issue guidance on a number of important issues regarding the tax treatment of cryptocurrency and the products we provide to our customers and from which we derive our income. In the absence of such guidance, we will take positions with respect to any such unsettled issues. There is no assurance that the IRS or a court will agree with the positions taken by us, in which case tax penalties and interest may be imposed that could adversely affect our business, cash flows or financial performance.
We also are subject to non-income taxes, such as payroll, sales, use, value-added, digital services, net worth, property, and goods and services taxes in the United States and various foreign jurisdictions. Specifically, we may be subject to new allocations of tax as a result of increasing efforts by certain jurisdictions to tax activities that may not have been subject to tax under existing tax principles. Companies such as ours may be adversely impacted by such taxes. Taxing authorities may disagree with certain positions we have taken. As a result, we may have exposure to additional tax liabilities that could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
As a result of these and other factors, the ultimate amount of tax obligations owed may differ from the amounts recorded in our financial statements and any such difference may harm our operating results in
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future periods in which we change our estimates of our tax obligations or in which the ultimate tax outcome is determined.
Our ability to use our deferred tax assets may be subject to certain limitations under U.S. or foreign law.
Realization of our deferred tax assets, in the form of future domestic or foreign tax deductions, credits or other tax benefits, will depend on future taxable income, and there is a risk that some or all of such tax assets could be subject to limitation or otherwise unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, all of which could adversely affect our operating results. For example, future changes in our stock ownership, the causes of which may be outside of our control, could result in an ownership change under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, which could limit our use of such tax assets in certain circumstances. Similarly, additional changes may be made to U.S. (federal and state) and foreign tax laws which could further limit our ability to fully utilize these tax assets against future taxable income.
Under the Inflation Reduction Act, our ability to utilize tax deductions or losses from prior years may be limited by the imposition of the 15% minimum tax if such minimum tax applies to us. Therefore, we may be required to pay additional U.S. federal income taxes despite any available tax deductions, U.S. federal net operating loss carryforwards, credits, or other tax benefits that we accumulate.
We are exposed to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates.
Our exposure to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates through our international operations could have a negative impact on our operating results and financial condition. From time to time, we may engage in currency hedging activities to limit our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations that arise in the normal course of business. The use of hedging instruments may not offset any or more than a portion of the adverse financial effects of unfavorable movements in foreign exchange rates, and may introduce additional risks if we are unable to structure effective hedges with such instruments.
If our estimates or judgment relating to our critical accounting estimates prove to be incorrect, our operating results could be adversely affected.
The preparation of financial statements in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”) requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in the Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, as provided in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Critical Accounting Estimates” in Part II, Item 8 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The results of these estimates form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities, and equity, and the amount of expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Significant estimates and judgments that comprise our critical accounting estimates involve the valuation of assets acquired and liabilities assumed in business combinations at and subsequent to acquisition, valuation of strategic investments, evaluation of tax positions, and evaluation of legal and other contingencies. Our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected if our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our operating results to differ from the expectations of analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in the trading price of our Class A common stock.
We may be adversely affected by natural disasters, pandemics, and other catastrophic events, and by man-made problems such as terrorism, that could disrupt our business operations, and our business continuity and disaster recovery plans may not adequately protect us from a serious disaster.
Natural disasters or other catastrophic events may also cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce, and the global economy, and could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Our business operations are subject to interruption by
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natural disasters, fire, power shortages, and other events beyond our control. In addition, our global operations expose us to risks associated with public health crises, such as pandemics and epidemics, which could harm our business and cause our operating results to suffer. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic and the related precautionary measures that we adopted have in the past resulted, and could in the future result, in difficulties or changes to our customer support, or create operational or other challenges, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Further, acts of terrorism, labor activism or unrest, and other geopolitical unrest, including ongoing regional conflicts around the world, could cause disruptions in our business or the businesses of our partners or the economy as a whole. In the event of a natural , including a major earthquake, blizzard, or hurricane, or a event such as a fire, power , or telecommunications , we may be to continue our operations and may endure system , reputational , in development of our platform, lengthy in service, of data security, and of data, all of which could have an effect on our future operating results. We do not maintain insurance sufficient to compensate us for the potentially significant that could result from to our services. Additionally, all the aforementioned risks may be further increased if we do not implement a recovery plan or our partners’ recovery plans prove to be . To the extent natural or other events concurrently impact data centers we rely on in connection with private key restoration, customers will experience significant in withdrawing funds, or in the extreme we may of customer funds.
If we fail to maintain an effective system of disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over our financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable regulations could be impaired.
As a public company we incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and related rules of the SEC require, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting to meet this standard, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources, including accounting-related costs and significant management oversight. If we encounter material weaknesses or deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting, we may not detect errors on a timely basis and our Consolidated Financial Statements may be materially misstated.
Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting could also adversely affect the results of periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting that are required to be included in our periodic reports filed with the SEC. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures or internal control over financial reporting may adversely affect investor confidence in us and, as a result, negatively impact the price of our Class A common stock and have a material and adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We may require additional capital to support business growth, and this capital might not be available.
We have funded our operations since inception primarily through equity financings, debt, and cash flows generated from operations. We cannot be certain that our operations will continue to fund our ongoing operations or the growth of our business. We intend to continue to make investments in our business, which investments may require us to secure additional funds. Additional financing may not be available on terms favorable to us, if at all, including due to general macroeconomic conditions, crypto market conditions and any disruptions in the crypto market, instability in the global banking system, increasing regulatory uncertainty and scrutiny or other unforeseen factors. In the event of a downgrade of our credit rating, our ability to raise additional financing may be adversely affected and any future debt offerings or credit arrangements we propose to enter into may be on less favorable terms or terms that may not be acceptable to us. In addition, even if debt financing is available, the cost of additional financing may be significantly higher than our current debt. If we incur additional debt, the debt holders
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would have rights senior to holders of our common stock to make claims on our assets, and the terms of any debt could restrict our operations, including our ability to pay dividends on our common stock. Furthermore, we have authorized the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock and common stock that our board of directors could use to, among other things, issue shares of our capital stock in the form of blockchain tokens, implement a shareholder rights plan, or issue other shares of preferred stock or common stock. We may issue shares of capital stock, including in the form of blockchain tokens, to our customers in connection with customer reward or loyalty programs. If we issue additional equity securities, shareholders will experience dilution, and the new equity securities could have rights senior to those of our currently authorized and issued common stock. The trading prices for our common stock may be highly volatile, which may reduce our ability to access capital on favorable terms or at all. In addition, a slowdown or other sustained adverse downturn in the general economic or crypto asset markets could adversely affect our business and the value of our Class A common stock. Because our decision to raise capital in the future will depend on numerous considerations, including factors beyond our control, we cannot predict or estimate the amount, timing, or nature of any future issuances of securities. As a result, our shareholders bear the risk of future issuances of debt or equity securities reducing the value of our Class A common stock and diluting their interests.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock
The market price of our Class A common stock may be volatile, and could decline significantly and rapidly. Market volatility may affect the value of an investment in our Class A common stock and could subject us to litigation.
Prior to the listing of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq, there was no public market for shares of our Class A common stock. Technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. The market price of our Class A common stock also could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to the risk factors described in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and others beyond our control, including:
• the number of shares of our Class A common stock publicly owned and available for trading;
• overall performance of the equity markets or publicly-listed financial services and technology companies;
• our actual or anticipated operating performance and the operating performance of our competitors;
• changes in the projected operational and financial results we provide to the public or our failure to meet those projections;
• failure of securities analysts to initiate or maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by any securities analysts who follow our company, or our failure to meet the estimates or the expectations of investors;
• any major change in our board of directors, management, or key personnel;
• if we issue additional shares of capital stock, including in the form of blockchain tokens, in connection with customer reward or loyalty programs;
• issuance of shares of our Class A common stock, whether in connection with an acquisition or upon conversion of some or all of our outstanding 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, and 2032 Convertible Notes;
• repurchases under the Repurchase Program (as defined below) on unfavorable terms or at all;
• the highly volatile nature of the onchain economy and the prices of crypto assets;
• rumors and market speculation involving the onchain economy and the regulation thereof, or us or other companies in our industry;
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• announcements by us or our competitors of significant innovations, new products, services, features, integrations or capabilities, acquisitions, strategic investments, partnerships, joint ventures, or capital commitments; and
• other events or factors, including those resulting from political instability and acts of war or terrorism, regional conflicts around the world, government shutdowns, bank failures, or responses to these events.
Furthermore, the stock market has recently experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies and financial services and technology companies in particular. These fluctuations often have been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. These broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general macroeconomic, political and market conditions such as recessions, interest rate changes, extended U.S. federal government shutdowns, or international currency fluctuations, may negatively impact the market price of our Class A common stock. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We are currently subject to shareholder litigation, as described in the section titled “Legal Proceedings” in Part I, Item 3 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and may continue to be the target of these types of actions or additional regulatory uncertainty and scrutiny in the future. Securities or regulatory actions against us could result in substantial costs and our management’s attention from other business , which could our business.
The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentrating voting control with those shareholders, including our directors, executive officers, and 5% shareholders, and their respective affiliates. As a result of this structure, our Chief Executive Officer and trusts established by our Chief Executive Officer collectively have control over key decision making as a result of controlling a majority of our voting stock. This ownership will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters, including the election of directors, amendments of our organizational documents, and any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or other major corporate transaction requiring shareholder approval.
Our Class B common stock has twenty votes per share, and our Class A common stock has one vote per share. Mr. Armstrong and the independent trustee of trusts established by Mr. Armstrong, collectively, are currently able to exercise voting rights with respect to a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock and, along with our directors, other executive officers, and 5% shareholders, and their affiliates, these shareholders hold in the aggregate a substantial majority of the voting power of our capital stock. Because of the twenty-to-one voting ratio between our Class B common stock and our Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock, including Mr. Armstrong, collectively are expected to continue to control a significant percentage of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore be able to control all matters submitted to our shareholders for approval until the earliest to occur of (i) the date fixed by the board of directors that is no less than 61 days and no more than 180 days after the date that the aggregate number of shares of Class B common stock held by Brian Armstrong and his affiliates is less than 25% of the aggregate number of shares of Class B common stock held by Mr. Armstrong and his affiliates on April 1, 2021, the date of effectiveness of the registration statement on Form S-1 for the listing of our Class A common stock on Nasdaq; (ii) the date and time specified by affirmative vote of the holders of at least 66-2/3% of the outstanding shares of Class B common stock, voting as a single class, and the affirmative vote of at least 66-2/3% of the then serving members of our board of directors, which must include the affirmative vote of Mr. Armstrong, if either (A) Mr. Armstrong is serving on our board of directors and has not been for cause or except for reason (as each term is defined in our certificate of formation) from his position as our Chief Executive Officer or (B) Mr. Armstrong has not been removed for cause or from the position of Chairman of the board of directors; and (iii) the death or disability (as defined in our certificate of formation) of Mr. Armstrong, when all outstanding shares of Class B common stock will convert automatically into shares of Class A common stock. Holders of our Class A common stock are not entitled to vote separately as a single class except under certain limited circumstances. This concentrated control
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may limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future, including the election of directors, amendments of our organizational documents, and any merger, consolidation, sale of all or substantially all of our assets, or other major corporate transaction requiring shareholder approval. In addition, this may prevent or discourage unsolicited acquisition proposals or offers for our capital stock that you may believe are in your best interest as one of our shareholders. In addition, Mr. Armstrong has significant influence over (i) the management and major strategic investments of our company as a result of his position as our Chief Executive Officer and (ii) the election or replacement of our directors as a result of his voting rights. As a board member and officer, Mr. Armstrong owes a fiduciary duty to our shareholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our shareholders. As a shareholder, even a controlling shareholder, Mr. Armstrong is entitled to vote his shares, and shares over which he has voting control, in his own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our shareholders generally.
Future transfers by holders of Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting to Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for estate planning purposes. The conversion of Class B common stock to Class A common stock will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock, including Mr. Armstrong, who retain their shares in the long term. Moreover, it is possible that one or more of the persons or entities holding our Class B common stock could gain significant voting control as other holders of Class B common stock sell or otherwise convert their shares into Class A common stock.
The dual class structure of our common stock may adversely affect the trading market for our Class A common stock.
Certain stock index providers exclude companies with multiple classes of shares of common stock from being added to certain stock indices. In addition, several shareholder advisory firms and large institutional investors oppose the use of multiple class structures. As a result, the dual class structure of our common stock may prevent the inclusion of our Class A common stock in such indices, may cause shareholder advisory firms to publish negative commentary about our corporate governance practices or otherwise seek to cause us to change our capital structure, and may result in large institutional investors not purchasing shares of our Class A common stock. Any exclusion from stock indices could result in less demand for our Class A common stock. Any actions or publications by shareholder advisory firms or institutional investors critical of our corporate governance practices or capital structure could also adversely affect the value of our Class A common stock.
Sales or distribution of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock, or the perception that such sales or distributions might occur, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
The sale or distribution of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock, particularly sales by us or our directors, executive officers, and principal shareholders, or the perception that these sales or distributions might occur in large quantities, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
In addition, we have filed a registration statement to register shares reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans. All of the shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options or vesting and settlement of restricted stock units and performance restricted stock units will be able to be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject to applicable vesting requirements and compliance by affiliates with Rule 144 under the Securities Act.
Further, certain holders of shares of our common stock will have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements for the public resale of shares of Class A common stock or to include such shares in registration statements that we may file for us or other shareholders. Any
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registration statement we file to register additional shares, whether as a result of registration rights or otherwise, could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline or be volatile.
We also may issue our capital stock or securities convertible into our capital stock, including in the form of blockchain tokens, from time to time in connection with a financing, an acquisition, investments, pursuant to customer rewards, loyalty programs, and other incentive plans, or otherwise. Any such issuance could result in substantial dilution to our existing shareholders and cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.
If securities or industry analysts do not publish or cease publishing research, or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research, about our business, the price of our Class A common stock and its liquidity could decline.
The trading market for our Class A common stock may be influenced by the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business, our market, and our competitors. We do not have any control over these analysts. If securities and industry analysts cease coverage of us altogether, the market price for our Class A common stock may be negatively affected. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgrade our Class A common stock, or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the price of our Class A common stock may decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our Class A common stock could decrease, which might cause our Class A common stock price and trading volume to decline. In light of the unpredictability inherent in our business, our financial outlook commentary may differ from analysts’ expectations, which could cause to the price of our Class A common stock.
We cannot guarantee that the Repurchase Program will be fully consummated or that such program will enhance the long-term value of our Class A common stock price.
In October 2024, our board of directors authorized and approved a share repurchase program, which provided for the repurchase of up to $1.0 billion of our outstanding Class A common stock without expiration. In October 2025, our board of directors (i) increased the aggregate repurchase authorization under the program from $1.0 billion to $2.0 billion and (ii) expanded the scope of the repurchases to include a portion of the aggregate principal amount of our outstanding 2026 Convertible Notes, 2029 Convertible Notes, 2030 Convertible Notes, 2032 Convertible Notes, and both series of Senior Notes (collectively, the “Notes”). In January 2026, our board of directors approved a $2.0 billion increase in the authorization of our previously announced repurchase program from $2.0 billion to $4.0 billion (as modified, the “Repurchase Program”). Repurchases may be made from time to time in the open market (including through trading plans intended to qualify under Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”)), in privately negotiated transactions, in a tender offer, or by other methods in accordance with the applicable federal and state laws and regulations. The timing of any repurchases will depend on market conditions and other considerations, and will be made at our discretion. The Repurchase Program does not obligate us to repurchase any dollar amount or number of shares of our Class A common stock or Notes and may be modified, suspended, or discontinued at any time.
The Repurchase Program could affect the price of our Class A common stock and increase the volatility thereof. Price volatility may cause the average price at which we repurchase our Class A common stock or Notes in a given period to exceed the stock’s price at a given point in time. There can be no assurance that the Repurchase Program will have a positive impact on our Class A common stock price or net income (loss) per share. Important factors that could cause us to discontinue or decrease repurchases under the Repurchase Program include, among others: unfavorable market conditions; the market price of our Class A common stock; the nature of other investment or strategic opportunities presented to us from time to time; our ability to make appropriate, timely, and beneficial decisions as to when, how, and whether to effect repurchases; and the availability of funds necessary to fulfill such repurchases.
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Provisions in our charter documents and under Texas law, and certain rules imposed by regulatory authorities, could make an acquisition of us, which may be beneficial to our shareholders, more difficult, limit attempts by our shareholders to replace or remove our current management, limit our shareholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees, and limit the price of our Class A common stock.
Provisions in our certificate of formation and bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a merger, acquisition, or other change of control of our company that the shareholders may consider favorable. In addition, because our board of directors is responsible for appointing the members of our management team, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our shareholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for shareholders to replace members of our board of directors. Our certificate of formation and bylaws include provisions that:
• permit our board of directors to establish the number of directors and fill any vacancies and newly-created directorships;
• require super-majority voting to amend some provisions in our certificate of formation and bylaws;
• authorize the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock and common stock that our board of directors could use to implement a shareholder rights plan or issue other shares of preferred stock or common stock, including blockchain tokens;
• provide that only our Chief Executive Officer, the chairperson of our board of directors, a majority of our board of directors, or the holders of not less than 50% of the voting power of our shareholders will be authorized to call a special meeting of shareholders;
• provide that, in certain circumstances, any shareholder action by written consent must be unanimous;
• prohibit cumulative voting;
• provide for a dual class common stock structure in which holders of our Class B common stock have the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring shareholder approval, even if they own significantly less than a majority of the outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock, including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets;
• provide that the board of directors is expressly authorized to make, alter, or repeal our bylaws; and
• provide for advance notice requirements for nominations for election to our board of directors or for proposing matters that can be acted upon by shareholders at annual shareholder meetings.
Moreover, Subchapter M of Chapter 21 of the Texas Business Organizations Code (the “TBOC”) may discourage, delay, or prevent a change of control of our company, and imposes certain restrictions on mergers, business combinations, and other transactions between holders of 20% or more of our common stock and us.
In addition, a third party attempting to acquire us or a substantial position in our common stock may be delayed or ultimately prevented from doing so by change in ownership or control regulations to which our regulated broker-dealer subsidiaries are subject. FINRA Rule 1017 generally provides that FINRA approval must be obtained in connection with any transaction resulting in a single person or entity owning, directly or indirectly, 25% or more of a member firm’s equity and would include a change of control of a parent company.
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Our bylaws and certificate of formation contain an exclusive forum provision and jury trial waiver for certain claims, respectively, which could limit our shareholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees.
Our bylaws, to the fullest extent permitted by law, provides that the Business Court in the First Business Court Division of the State of Texas is the exclusive forum for any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; any action asserting a claim that is based upon a breach of fiduciary duty owed by, or other wrongdoing by, any current or former director, officer, shareholder, employee or agent of ours, arising pursuant to the TBOC, our certificate of formation, or our bylaws; any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine; or any action asserting an “internal corporate claim” as defined in Section 2.115 of the TBOC. In addition, our certificate of formation provides that we, and our shareholders, directors, and officers, waive their rights to trial by jury in any legal proceeding arising out of or relating to any “internal entity claim.”
Moreover, Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations thereunder and our bylaws provide that the federal district courts of the United States of America are, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act, or a Federal Forum Provision, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow determine that the Federal Forum Provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of the Federal Forum Provision means that suits brought by our shareholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court. Section 27 of the Exchange Act creates exclusive federal jurisdiction over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. The Federal Forum Provision applies to suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act to the fullest extent permitted by law. Accordingly, actions by our shareholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder must be brought in federal court. Our shareholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in any of our securities will be deemed to have notice of and consented to our exclusive forum provisions, including the Federal Forum Provision. These provisions may limit our shareholders’ ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum they find favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers, and other employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our bylaws contain an ownership threshold that must be met for a shareholder or shareholders to bring derivative claims against our officers or directors, which could limit a shareholder’s ability to bring such claims. In addition, Texas law does not recognize demand futility and as such may require additional procedural steps for a shareholder to bring a derivative claim.
Our bylaws provide that no shareholder or group of shareholders may in institute or maintain a derivative proceeding brought on our behalf against any of our directors or officers, unless the shareholder or group of shareholders, at the time the derivative proceeding is instituted, beneficially owns a number of shares of common stock sufficient to meet an ownership threshold of at least 3% of our total outstanding shares. In addition, Texas law generally does not recognize demand futility, which means that a shareholder bringing such a claim must provide our board of directors an opportunity to determine whether the claim is in our best interests before the shareholder may proceed with a lawsuit. Our board of directors will generally have 90 days in which to make this determination.
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