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It's all part of a masterplan that could bring early investors...

Editor's Note: Silicon Valley legend Jeff Brown is forecasting that Elon Musk's "Kardashev Project" is about to trigger the greatest wealth creation event in history. If you missed out on Tesla... Click here to see the details of what Elon has coming next or read more below.

Dear Reader,

Elon Musk just made a huge announcement...

That could spell the end for Microsoft.

It's all part of his masterplan.

While everyone is talking about the SpaceX IPO, Elon Musk has moved on to bigger and better things...

With the potential to be much more lucrative for folks who make the right moves today.

Everything is coming together quickly.

Tesla and xAI's newly announced "Macrohard" project could disrupt the entire software industry.

But it's just one small part of Elon's next move... one more blurring of the lines between his companies.

Once his plan is complete everything about the way we look at Elon Musk and his companies like SpaceX and Tesla will change.

Elon believes it will even trigger a quadrillion dollar wealth creation event...

And give folks a shot at up to 500%+ gains in the near term and far more in the years to come as Elon Musk makes the world's first $10 trillion company.

Silicon Valley insider, Jeff Brown, put together a brief video explaining Elon's masterplan...

The drastic move he could make as soon as the end of this month...

And exactly where investors should position themselves today.

Click here to get the full story. It's completely free to watch.

Regards,

Lindsey Hough
Managing Director, Brownstone Research

P.S. The kind of move Jeff is sharing today has triggered gains of up to 2,100%. This time around, he believes it will be even bigger.

Click this link now to get ahead of Elon's next move, before it's too late.

Coinbase is worth watching right now because it sits at the center of one of the market’s most unstable but most tradable ecosystems.

This is not just a stock reacting to a single earnings print. It is a listed proxy for crypto market structure itself: bitcoin price direction, retail participation, institutional derivatives growth, ETF flow behavior, stablecoin adoption, and regulatory expectations. When bitcoin moves from the low $60,000s back into the low $70,000s, Coinbase does not just get a price sympathy bid. It gets a fresh debate around trading volumes, take rates, retail behavior, and whether cyclical revenue can recover faster than the Street expects.

That is why the user-noted pickup in attention around COIN makes sense. The stock’s 1.19% gain to $195.53 looks modest in isolation, but the session range was not modest. A stock that opens at $203.76, trades up to $206.63, sells down to $193.88, and still closes green is telling you that positioning is active and opinion is divided. That is usually what a transition phase looks like.

The broader crypto backdrop also matters. Coinbase’s own institutional research downgraded its 1Q26 outlook to neutral in early March, saying momentum had faded and geopolitical and liquidity concerns had clouded the near-term path. Yet just ten days later, bitcoin pushed back above $73,000 intraday and crypto-linked equities caught a bid. That disconnect is the story: fundamentals are not clean, but price action has become more interesting again.

For active traders, that is usually where opportunity begins.

The most important thing to understand about Coinbase is that it is no longer just a spot-crypto-volume story.

It is still cyclical, but it is not as one-dimensional as it was two years ago.

Start with the core earnings numbers. In Q4 2025, Coinbase reported $1.781 billion in total revenue, down from $1.869 billion in Q3. Net revenue was $1.710 billion. Full-year 2025 total revenue came in at $7.181 billion, versus $6.564 billion in 2024. Transaction revenue for the full year totaled $4.055 billion, while subscription and services revenue reached $2.828 billion.

That is the first key point.

Even after a weaker quarter, Coinbase is still a multi-engine business. The old bear case was that when bitcoin cools, Coinbase’s earnings simply fall off a cliff. That is still partly true on the transaction side, but much less true on the consolidated revenue line because subscription and services are now large enough to act as a stabilizer.

The quarter shows that clearly.

Transaction revenue in Q4 was $982.7 million, down 6% quarter over quarter. Consumer spot trading volume was $56 billion, also down 6%, while consumer transaction revenue was $734 million, down 13%. That is what the cyclical side looks like when retail enthusiasm softens.

But institutional dynamics moved differently. Institutional spot trading volume was $215 billion, down 13% quarter over quarter, yet institutional transaction revenue rose 37% to $185 million. Coinbase explicitly pointed to derivatives, especially Deribit, as an area of strong performance. That matters because it suggests the company is becoming less dependent on the traditional retail spot business and more exposed to higher-value institutional activity.

Then there is subscription and services.

That segment generated $727.4 million in Q4. Stablecoin revenue alone was $364.1 million, up from $225.9 million a year earlier. Average USDC held in Coinbase products rose 18% quarter over quarter to $17.8 billion, while average USDC market capitalization reached $76.2 billion.

Those numbers are more important than they look.

Why? Because they tell you Coinbase is building shock absorbers.

Reuters framed the stablecoin and subscription mix as diversification that can smooth out earnings relative to the company’s prior dependence on trading. That is the right way to read it. When crypto prices are rangebound and retail cools, stablecoin balances, institutional financing, staking, and other services can keep the P&L from collapsing as violently as it used to.

Management is leaning into that logic. The company said 2025 produced all-time highs across multiple products: $5.2 trillion in total trading volume, 6.4% crypto trading volume market share, $2.8 billion in subscription and services revenue, and nearly 1 million paid Coinbase One subscribers. It also said it now has 12 products generating more than $100 million each in annualized revenue.

That is not a trivial shift.

Coinbase is trying to graduate from “crypto broker with earnings leverage” to “financial infrastructure platform for digital assets.”

The problem is that the market has not fully decided whether to believe that transformation yet.

This is where the analysis gets more interesting.

Coinbase stock often trades as if it is bitcoin with equity beta. But the underlying business now deserves a more nuanced framework.

On one side, the bull case is straightforward. Coinbase is more diversified, more institutional, and more embedded in stablecoins, custody, derivatives, and infrastructure than it was before. It is not just monetizing retail speculation anymore. It is building recurring revenue streams around the digital-asset system itself. The $364.1 million stablecoin revenue figure and $2.828 billion annual subscription/services figure are strong evidence of that.

On the other side, the bear case has not disappeared. Reuters reported that Coinbase swung to a $666.7 million quarterly loss, or $2.49 per share, in Q4 as trading slowed and digital assets slumped after late-2025 highs. Analysts had expected a profit. Reuters also noted that bitcoin had nearly halved from its October peak, while ETF outflows intensified during the downturn.

That means the stock is still hostage to the same basic truth: when crypto volatility drops for the wrong reasons, Coinbase’s highest-margin legacy engine still comes under pressure.

So which story matters more right now?

For traders, the answer is usually whichever story the market is willing to price at this moment.

Right now, the market appears to be saying this: Coinbase is a better business than it was, but the 2026 backdrop still looks softer than bulls hoped. S&P Global’s March research said consensus estimates point to slower trading activity and weaker profitability in 2026, even after the recent stock rally.

That is why COIN can rally with bitcoin and still fail to command an unquestioned growth multiple.

Coinbase also matters because it tells you what kind of crypto exposure the equity market wants.

If COIN works, it usually means investors are comfortable with infrastructure-style crypto exposure rather than just token exposure. Coinbase is liquid, institutionally owned, and visible. It often functions as the first equity expression of a crypto risk-on move.

That matters for crypto-related names broadly. A constructive COIN tape can support brokers, miners, custody plays, derivatives-linked names, and anything tied to digital-asset activity. A weak COIN tape, even with decent crypto prices, can imply the market is skeptical that token price strength is translating into monetizable trading economics.

Coinbase’s derivatives push also has broader implications.

The company said all-time highs in derivatives trading volume helped drive results, and its acquisition of Deribit expanded its global leadership in crypto options and open interest. That puts pressure on the old narrative that Coinbase is too dependent on U.S. retail spot trading. It also means the company is becoming more directly tied to the professionalization of crypto markets.

And then there is regulation.

Part of Coinbase’s attraction in any improving crypto tape is that it tends to benefit disproportionately when the market starts pricing in regulatory clarity. Even before that clarity is fully delivered, the stock often moves on expectations around market structure, stablecoins, and institutional adoption. That is one reason the company’s own research and conference commentary keep emphasizing long-term ecosystem development rather than just near-term trading.

From a trading standpoint, Coinbase is in a very interesting zone.

The stock closed at $195.53, but the session range was wide enough to matter: $206.63 high, $193.88 low. That means the market tested a meaningful upside breakout, rejected part of it, and then held enough demand to finish positive. That is usually not random churn. It often signals that larger participants are active on both sides.

The immediate technical question is whether COIN can convert the $200-$206 area from rejection into acceptance.

If it can, the market is likely beginning to treat the recent crypto rebound as something more than a one-day reflex. If it cannot, then the upper end of Friday’s range may act as a near-term ceiling until either bitcoin extends higher or Coinbase gets a fresh company-specific catalyst.

The lower end of the setup is just as important. The stock’s intraday low at $193.88 effectively marked the line where dip buyers stepped in. A clean break below that would suggest Friday’s green close overstated the health of the move. Holding above it keeps the short-term structure constructive.

For active traders, Coinbase is also a volatility translator.

Bitcoin traded from $70,037 to $73,897 during the session. Ethereum ranged from $2,056.75 to $2,201.71. When the underlying assets are moving like that, COIN often becomes a leveraged expression of whether the market expects those moves to persist or fade.

This is why the stock deserves close monitoring around VWAP, gap retention, and whether intraday pullbacks are being bought with conviction or merely stabilized.

The bull case is that Friday’s move is the start of a more durable re-rating.

For that to happen, bitcoin likely needs to remain above the low $70,000s, or at least hold most of the recent rebound, while Coinbase continues to benefit from the return of volatility and trading activity. In that scenario, investors start focusing less on the February earnings miss and more on the company’s diversification: $2.8 billion in annual subscription/services revenue, rising stablecoin economics, institutional derivatives strength, and higher market share.

The base case is more mixed.

Crypto remains choppy, Coinbase remains highly tradable, but the stock struggles to fully escape the market’s cautious 2026 estimates. The company is treated as improved but still cyclical. That would likely keep COIN in a broad range where it rallies on volatility bursts and then digests as analysts refocus on margin and revenue sensitivity.

The bear case is that the crypto rebound proves shallow.

If bitcoin loses the $70,000 area and the market reverts to the lower-volatility, lower-participation regime Coinbase itself warned about in early March, then the stock’s recent strength could unwind quickly. In that case, the February earnings miss, the $666.7 million quarterly loss, and the softer transaction backdrop would move back to the center of the story.

For traders, the right question is not whether Coinbase is a “good company.”

The right question is which revenue engine the market is pricing today.

Watch three things next.

First, watch bitcoin itself. If BTC can hold the low $70,000s after touching $73,897, the odds improve that Coinbase sees more constructive volume conditions. If BTC fades back toward the mid-$60,000s, COIN likely loses momentum too.

Second, watch whether COIN can reclaim and hold the $200-$206 zone. That is where Friday’s move met supply. A successful retake would be a stronger confirmation signal than Friday’s modest green close alone.

Third, watch the mix of crypto narratives. If the conversation shifts back toward stablecoins, derivatives, exchange share, and infrastructure rather than pure token prices, Coinbase usually looks better relative to the rest of the crypto complex because that is where its diversification story is strongest.

The key is to focus on confirmation rather than prediction.

Coinbase rose 1.19% to $195.53, but the more important takeaway is not the percentage move.

It is what the move represents.

This is a stock trying to balance two truths at once. The first is that crypto prices, volatility, and market attention are starting to improve again. The second is that Coinbase’s own recent results and the Street’s 2026 expectations still reflect a softer operating backdrop than bulls would like.

That tension is exactly why COIN remains one of the most useful active-trader names in the market.

It offers direct exposure to crypto sentiment, but with a deeper fundamental debate underneath: transaction revenue versus stablecoin monetization, retail versus institutional flow, cycle sensitivity versus infrastructure durability. The company is unquestionably more diversified than before, with $7.181 billion in 2025 revenue, $2.828 billion in annual subscription/services revenue, and all-time-high product breadth. But it is still trading in a market that wants proof, not just potential.

_{Editorial Disclaimer}

_{This commentary is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All market strategies involve risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers should conduct their own analysis or consult a licensed financial professional before making investment decisions.}