Coinbase Takes It in the Teeth

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in India in April. Photo by Bloomberg

How is this for a head-scratcher? Gaming software maker AppLovin made an unsolicited offer to buy Unity Software in an all-stock deal worth more than $17.5 billion, with one unusual condition: Unity must abandon an existing agreement to acquire an AppLovin competitor called IronSource.

I’ll buy you if you don’t buy our competitor—I suppose we could call that a FOMO deal. Or maybe it’s a shrewd move. Anyway you slice it, consolidation is underway in gaming, in streaming, in—well, everything!

Coinbase Searches for the Bottom

Coinbase earnings certainly hit some milestones. Just not the good kind. Here’s a snapshot. (Historical comparisons are from S&P Global Market Intelligence.)

Biggest ever quarterly net loss ($1.1 billion), since at least 2019
Lowest quarterly revenue since 2020 ($803 million, down 61% year over year)
Lowest trading volume and total assets on its platform since 2020 ($217 million and $96 billion, respectively)
Lowest expected average transaction revenue per user since at least 2017 (low $20s expected for the 2022 fiscal year, compared to $64 for 2021), per company filings.

You can’t chalk it all up to the broader crypto meltdown. At the root of the company’s problems is the fact that Coinbase is losing market share. While total spot-trading volume was down only 3% compared to the first quarter of this year, Coinbase’s trading volume was down 30%, the company said.