Morning Minute: Coinbase Smashes Q3 Earnings Despite Sideways Crypto Market

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall 2-3% after Powell says rate cut not certain in December
• US Senator claims Binance helped with TRUMP launch for CZ pardon
• Coinbase smashes earnings with $1.9B in revenue; Armstrong toys with mention markets
• MSTR beats earnings with $2.8B in profit, holds 640,808 BTC
• Token Works announces REKTSTR as first ERC20 strategy

📈 Coinbase Crushes Q3 Earnings, Transaction Revenue Toplines Surge

Crypto exchange Coinbase smashed its Q3 earnings.

And now finds itself outperforming Bitcoin in 2025.

📌 What Happened

Coinbase announced its Q3 results yesterday after market closed, blowing past expectations.

Key takeaways:

• Revenue of $1.9B (~55% year-over-year), beating consensus by roughly $200M
• Net income $433M (477% YOY)
• Transaction revenue topped $1B (+83% YOY), a demographic shift driven by institutional flows and high-frequency trading
• Monthly transacting users (MTUs) came in at 12.6M, exceeding expectations and reversing the prior quarter’s decline
• Base Layer (the company’s Layer-2 chain) achieved positive adjusted EBITDA for the first time
• Forward guidance: Coinbase projects Q4 revenue in the $2.2B–$2.3B range, assuming average daily trading volume in the $300B range and modest crypto price tailwinds.

Coinbase also bought ~$300M of Bitcoin in Q3.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“We are accelerating payments through stablecoin adoption, which we anticipate will continue given policy tailwinds, and ongoing adoption from financial institutions and corporates for payment and treasury needs.” – Coinbase shareholder letter

🧠 Why It Matters

Coinbase has a few factors in its favor right now: volatility, institutional demand, stablecoin adoption and favorable regulatory shifts.

Expanding on those:

• Heightened volatility in digital-assets in July and strong institutional interest helped drive the surge in transaction revenues
• They see the rising importance of stablecoins for payments and treasury use, saying they anticipate continued growth of stable-coin adoption supported by “policy tailwinds” and institutional/ corporate demand
• Trading volumes and revenue benefited from a crypto rally tied to both macro developments and favorable regulatory shifts.

Plus, their L2 Base continues to shine and drive meaningful revenue for the company.

It’s a strong combination.

And they will need it, with more and more big banks and institutions getting into the crypto game (custody, trading and more).

But maybe that turns into a tailwind for Coinbase as well, with their crypto-as-a-service offering starting to take off.

The stronger Coinbase is, the more appealing COIN stock is compared to crypto majors (even Bitcoin).

Many who are just exploring the space will be attracted to the revenue and fundamentals COIN offers). And it has outperformed Bitcoin YTD.

If that trend continues, expect more capitulation out of crypto tokens and into the picks and shovels (COIN stock).

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are down 1-3% after a major post-FOMC dip yesterday; BTC -3% at $110,100, ETH -3% at $3,900, BNB +1% at $1,120, SOL -2% at $192
• ZEC (+2%) and AERO (+2%) led top movers
• 870M+ was liquidated from the crypto market yesterday after Bitcoin’s dip to $106,000 driving many alts down 5-10%+
• Senator Chris Murphy has alleged that Binance helped coordinate the Trump memecoin launch in exchange for CZ’s pardon (also featured on the WSJ)
• Coinbase Q3 beat revenue with ~$1.9B, transaction revenue tops $1B
• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also mentioned several keywords from prediction market mention markets, raising concerns over market integrity
• Strategy (MicroStrategy) Q3 reported ~$2.8B profit in Q3 despite softer BTC; treasury >$68B BTC (640,808 BTC)
• Drake & Adin Ross were sued, with the class action lawsuit alleging misleading promos for crypto casino Stake
• Western Union applied to trademark WUUSD for its stablecoin

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are mostly red; DOGE -2%, Shiba -1%, PEPE -3%, PENGU -8%, BONK -2%, TRUMP -1%, SPX -7%, and FARTCOIN -7%
• LAB (+80%), pippin (+69%) and jelly jelly (+23%) led top meme movers; MACHINES +88x leading top movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs: