Exhibit 99.1
Fellow shareholders,
Welcome to our first shareholder letter following our direct listing on Nasdaq on April 14, 2021. In this letter, we will discuss our quarterly financial performance, provide product updates, share insights on the rapidly evolving crypto landscape, and provide our financial outlook.
Our strong Q1 2021 results reflect the strength of the crypto price cycle we entered in Q4 2020. We saw many crypto assets reach all time high prices, high levels of volatility, and increased interest across the entire cryptoeconomy. Crypto market capitalization reached nearly $2 trillion at the end of Q1 2021 compared to $782 billion at the end of Q4 2020. By the end of Q1, the price of Bitcoin had nearly doubled to approximately $59,000 compared to the end of 2020, and the price of Ethereum more than doubled during this same period to approximately $1,900. This market environment drove strong engagement with the Coinbase platform, reflected in retail, institutional and ecosystem partner growth across all key metrics including our Verified Users, retail Monthly Transacting Users (MTUs), Trading Volume, and Assets on Platform.
At the same time, we continued to see our growth flywheel in action. First, more participants than ever entered the cryptoeconomy in Q1. We now have over 56 million Verified Users, including more than 8,000 institutions, and over 134,000 ecosystem partners on our platform. Retail MTUs grew to 6.1 million in Q1 2021, more than double compared to Q4 2020. Second, we expanded the breadth and depth of the assets that we support. We added support for 7 new assets to trade and 13 new assets to custody. Adding support for new assets is an important driver of growth of Trading Volume and Assets on Platform. Lastly, we continued to launch innovative products that attracted new customers and deepened relationships with existing ones. For example, in Q1 we acquired Bison Trails--now part of our Coinbase Cloud offering--that will allow companies to send and store crypto, accept crypto payments, and build their businesses with crypto-native infrastructure.
Despite our strong Q1 results, the rapid expansion of the cryptoeconomy also creates challenges for Coinbase. Competition is increasing as new market entrants join the cryptoeconomy every month. Our competitors are supporting certain crypto assets that are experiencing large trading volume and growth in market capitalization that we do not currently support, as well as offering new products and services that we do not offer. We welcome these challenges as they indicate that the market we serve is growing rapidly, but we also have to continue to move quickly to address them, and that inspires us towards action and growth.
The following information was filed by Coinbase Global, Inc. (COIN) on Thursday, May 13, 2021 as an 8K 2.02 statement, which is an earnings press release pertaining to results of operations and financial condition. It may be helpful to assess the quality of management by comparing the information in the press release to the information in the accompanying 10-Q Quarterly Report statement of earnings and operation as management may choose to highlight particular information in the press release.