Source: blocknity.com
Coinbase Global Inc. has become the first cryptocurrency company to enter the Fortune 500 list, a ranking of the biggest companies in the U.S by revenue.
Although Coinbase has been struggling to meet the expectations of analysts during the crypto crash, the San Francisco-based crypto exchange recorded a great success in 2021 which propelled it to position 437 in the Fortune list of the biggest U.S companies.
Source: Twitter.com
Coinbase came to the spotlight after it went public via a direct listing in April 2021, less than a decade after its launch.
Before the company was directly listed, analysts had predicted that Coinbase could be launched with a valuation of $100 billion. However, it closed its first day of trade with a valuation of $61.
In 2021, Coinbase generated a revenue of $7.8 billion, just above the minimum of $6.4 billion that was needed for companies to be considered for listing in the Fortune 500. The 2022 list only considers the financial performance of companies in 2021. They set the threshold to $5.4 billion.
Source: businessyield.com
2022 has been a tough year for the cryptocurrency industry, with crypto prices having crashed and volumes decreasing. Although Coinbase has tried to diversify its revenue streams by opening its own NFT marketplace in early May, its marketplace only has about 2,900 unique active users.
Coinbase is still focusing on cryptocurrency trading as its major business, hence, the crypto crash has really hurt its business. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap and which takes up about 44% of the cryptocurrency market, is entrenched at the $30,000 mark.
Source: Google Finance
The entire crypto market has lost almost $1 trillion year-to-date, the worst for the cryptocurrency industry ever.
The ongoing crypto crash has heavily affected Coinbase as cryptocurrency investors slowed their activity. In the first quarter of the year, the trading volume on Coinbase stood at $309 billion, which is less than the $331.2 billion that analysts expected. The trading volume on the crypto exchange was down by 39% from the $547 billion that Coinbase recorded in the fourth quarter of 2021 when cryptocurrency prices hit their all-time highs.
The cryptocurrency exchange missed the expectations of analysts in the first quarter of the year, generating a revenue of $1.16 billion in the first three months and a net loss of $430 million. The crypto exchange’s revenue dropped by 53% from the $2.5 billion it had achieved in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Coinbase’s stock price has also declined. The stocks were trading at about $60 on Tuesday, with its shares having declined by 82% from the closing price of $328.38 recorded on the first day of its trading last April.
Although Coinbase had plans to triple the size of its company in 2022, Emilie Choi, its chief operating officer, announced that the company will be scaling back hiring, one of the reasons being the ongoing crypto crash. The cryptocurrency exchange managed to hire 1,200 people in the first quarter of the year. Currently, Coinbase has over 4,900 employees according to data on its official website.
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