Coinbase Decided Following Strategy’s Bitcoin Reserve Playbook ‘Too Risky’: CEO

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has revealed that the crypto alternate thought of placing 80% of its stability sheet into Bitcoin—however determined in opposition to it over fears it might “kill the corporate.”

Throughout a question-and-answer session with clients, executives have been asked whether or not they missed a possibility to start out amassing BTC sooner, given the corporate had an eight-year headstart on software program agency Technique.

Armstrong argued that Bitcoin’s volatility meant an aggressive method would have been too dangerous, particularly in Coinbase’s early days when key milestones wanted to be reached to unlock extra funding rounds.

“If our runway had gone from 18 months—and out of the blue it was 12 months, or 10 months—it might have simply killed the corporate completely,” Armstrong mentioned.

He defined that, again when Coinbase was a startup, executives made a “aware selection about threat,” as a pointy pullback in BTC’s value on the flawed time would have affected the buying and selling platform’s development.

Nonetheless, Armstrong careworn that the corporate does maintain Bitcoin on its stability sheet, and about 25% of its web money is presently in crypto.

“We’re not going to take 80%, that will be too dangerous I feel,” he added.

CFO Alesia Haas advised viewers that Coinbase’s standing as an working firm implies that its predominant focus has been on growing new services, in addition to onboarding one billion individuals to crypto.

“We’ve by no means considered ourselves as an funding firm, and haven’t been strategically rising the funding portfolio as a main enterprise,” she mentioned.

Haas went on to disclose that Coinbase’s crypto holdings stood at $1.3 billion in the course of the first quarter of 2025, rising by a further $150 million between January and March. That is principally BTC together with “a pair” of different digital property.

“We’ve plans to develop that—relaxation assured,” she added.

After all, these reserves pale compared to the 555,450 BTC that Technique has on its stability sheet, which is price $58 billion on the time of writing.

The software program agency first began buying BTC again in August 2020, and is presently sitting on paper income of about $30 billion. Since then, numerous different corporations have adopted a similar Bitcoin treasury strategy.

Edited by Stephen Graves.