Published May 27, 2026
Crypto companies try to prove they can grow beyond token trading | CNBC
Transcript
Crypto companies used to have a simple public market pitch. When token prices moved higher, people traded, which made exchanges money. But this earnings cycle exposed the weakness in that model. And crypto companies are trying to make the case that they can continue to make money, even in a crypto slump.
We know seeing the crypto becoming something bigger, becoming something which is intertwined with the real economy, which means that people have higher expectations of those companies, so they need to diversify.
Coinbase, Robinhood, Circle, Bullish and Strategy and others are still selling investors crypto exposure, but they're also trying to prove that their businesses can work even when crypto trading cools. Earnings show that these companies are highly exposed to the trading cycle. Coinbase reported $1.4 billion in revenue and a $394 million net loss in Q1 of 2026.
Our revenue is inherently nonlinear. A significant portion moves in line with crypto asset prices and trading volumes.
Coinbase's answer is to make its trading business less dependent on crypto. The company is adding derivatives, prediction markets, stocks and other products.
Past year, we've transformed Coinbase from a primarily spot focused crypto platform into a place where you can now trade any asset class.
I think Brian Armstrong is using this phrase, which I think is spot on. Everything exchange, which is you cannot just trade crypto here. It can be the one stop shop for your financial life.
Coinbase is framing the next phase as a bigger trading menu. Robinhood and Bullish are making a different argument — if traditional assets move on chain, meaning the activity happens on a blockchain rather than only inside a company's private database or a traditional financial system, crypto companies can play a role in the systems that issue, trade and track them.
I want to get away from talking about the price of Bitcoin, or all of the other native crypto assets. Our strategy is to take crypto infrastructure and apply it to assets that have real world utility. That's why we care so much about tokenization.
Bullish is making the same argument from the institutional side. Bullish defines tokenization as converting ownership of an asset into a transferable record on a blockchain. In securities markets, that could affect how assets are issued, traded, transferred, settled and recorded, according to the SEC. Bullish is still built around a digital asset exchange, but its biggest Q1 move was signing a $4.2 billion deal to acquire Equiniti, a transfer agent that helps companies manage shareholder records. Bullish says the deal would combine traditional issuer services with tokenization infrastructure.
On May 5th, we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Equiniti for $4.2 billion, creating a tokenization powerhouse with an end to end stack. You are now entering the blockchain era, which offers something fundamentally different — unconstrained programmable ownership through tokenized assets.
A crypto exchange buying a transfer agent looks less unusual when it's viewed through the tokenization pitch. If stocks, funds and other assets move on chain, the companies that manage ownership records, issuer relationships and settlement rails could become more valuable.
We see the crypto companies try to become more fintech or even traditional finance companies. The other very big traditional financial brands in the US, like the Schwabs, the Fidelitys, the ICEs, the CME, also go into that direction, which is on chain. So we see the two worlds colliding. Who is going to win? Of course nobody knows.
Circle has a different problem. Its core business may avoid trading volatility, but it can't escape the crypto cycle driving activity. For that business, it's the issuer of USDC, the second biggest stablecoin, which is a digital asset designed to track the price of another asset, usually the US dollar. So the more people who use USDC, the bigger Circle's business can get. In Q1, there was $77 billion worth of USDC in circulation. Circle's revenue and reserve income rose 20% to $694 million. But most of its revenue comes from interest on the assets backing USDC. That means the company can grow when more people use USDC, but it's also exposed to falling interest rates. USDC also depends heavily on networks like Ethereum and Solana for settlement, and has a revenue sharing agreement with Coinbase, its key distribution partner, that critics argue is more favorable to Coinbase. Circle's answer is to become more than the issuer of a stablecoin. It's building a blockchain called Arc to become what CEO Jeremy Allaire describes as an operating system for the entire economy.
I think what Circle is trying to do right now is they want to become not only the coin, but the platform itself. So they introduced Arc. Arc is a blockchain. So they see themselves not only having the instrument but also the platform where the instrument plays a role.
If infrastructure is the future of crypto, that could have major implications for the industry.
I think, again, many people who are not daily working in crypto do not get this idea of who owns the rails. Why is Robinhood launching their own chain? Because they don't want to go and transact on the Coinbase chain, so they have their own chain. And I know that the word blockchain still seems very complex and difficult to manage, but we believe that managing a blockchain will become something like managing a website. Every institution will have a blockchain.
Even companies that look like pure crypto price bets are trying to sell investors a more managed business model. Strategy is the pioneer of the crypto treasury approach so many have tried to copy. Companies in the sector buy and hold crypto on their balance sheets, with the sole purpose of giving shareholders exposure to those assets. In Q1, it reported a $14.5 billion operating loss because Bitcoin fell. Its strategy is to raise capital responsibly, still buying and holding Bitcoin over the long term and growing Bitcoin per share, but more actively managing the balance sheet to do so.
We want to increase Bitcoin per share, which will increase the price of the common equity and ultimately be better for our common shareholders. We're not going to sit back and just say, you know, we'll never sell the Bitcoin. We want to be net aggregators of Bitcoin, increasing our total Bitcoin, but more importantly increasing our Bitcoin per share, because we think that is what is going to be most accretive long term for MSTR and for the common.
At its core, the trend is about decoupling investor returns from the crypto cycle. The question for investors is whether those new businesses can grow fast enough before the next crypto downturn tests them again.
CNBC examines how Coinbase, Circle, Bullish, Robinhood, and Strategy are shifting from trading-dependent revenue models to financial infrastructure. The video covers Coinbase's "everything exchange" pivot, Bullish's $4.2 billion Equiniti acquisition for tokenized securities, Circle's Arc blockchain, Robinhood's own chain, and why every institution may soon operate a blockchain. A market-wide look at the infrastructure trend driving tokenization adoption.
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