The crypto exchange posted a net loss of $394 million and revenue of $1.41 billion, both missing Wall Street expectations
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Coinbase posted a net loss of $394 million in the first quarter of 2026, the company said Thursday, as a sharp drop in token prices sapped digital asset trading activity and helped cut quarterly revenue by 31% to $1.41 billion. The losses totaled $1.47 per share.
Wall Street had penciled in earnings of 27 cents per share and $1.52 billion in revenue, according to CNBC. Transaction revenue came in at $755.8 million, while subscription revenue totaled $583.5 million. Coinbase stock fell about 6% in after-hours trading.
Quarter-end mark-to-market requirements for its crypto holdings mean that accounting rules can drive dramatic fluctuations in the company's reported net income figures. A year earlier, the company had recorded net income of $66 million.
On a non-GAAP basis, Adjusted EBITDA came in at $303.3 million, down from $929.9 million in the first quarter of 2025, according to the company.
Revenue from stablecoins reached $305 million, compared with $274 million in the year-ago period, as USDC's market cap expanded and the average amount of USDC held within Coinbase products hit a record high. On the derivatives side, trading volume surged 169% compared with the prior-year quarter, and Coinbase said its overall share of global crypto trading volume climbed to an all-time high of 8.6%.
By March, the prediction markets segment — which the company introduced in late January — had already generated an annualized revenue run rate of $100 million, the company said. Reducing the company's reliance on swings in crypto trading activity has become a stated priority for CFO Alesia Haas. "We're trying to diversify the things that people can trade so that as markets shift, as different behaviors shift, we'll always have something that people want to trade," Haas told CNBC.
Looking ahead, Coinbase guided for subscription and services revenue in a range of $565 million to $645 million in the current quarter, falling short of the $655.5 million average estimate among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Those figures arrived days after Coinbase's disclosure that approximately 700 positions — representing around 14% of its total headcount — would be eliminated, with leadership pointing to both the weakness in crypto markets and a strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence. Restructuring charges tied to the workforce reduction are expected to total between $50 million and $60 million, the bulk of which will hit the company's books in the current quarter.
The layoffs are part of a broader contraction across crypto companies this year. Algorand, Gemini, and Crypto.com have each reduced headcount in recent months, with several citing macroeconomic uncertainty and weak conditions in digital asset markets. Armstrong has described the reorganization as an effort to reshape Coinbase into an AI-first company, with fewer management tiers and a workforce oriented around artificial intelligence capabilities.
"The market environment this quarter was softer, but the underlying fundamentals of our business remain strong," Haas said in a statement.
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