Coinbase Is Making $2.7 Million a Day

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bitcoin News: In information released to shareholders this week, Coinbase revealed that it recorded turnover of $1 billion last year, which works out at an astonishing $2.74 million a day or $2,000 a minute. As America's largest bitcoin broker, Coinbase claims the lion's share of the money that's pouring into the crypto space at a dizzying rate. 2017 was a bumper year for all crypto exchanges, which reported record numbers across the board: new signups, new staff hired, new trading pairs, and new revenue. Those revenue streams have turned into a torrent that has caused Coinbase' coffers to swell. Recode reports that the company's revenue exceeded $1 billion last year, most of it derived from the trading fees it levies. These vary from between 0.25% and 1%. and quickly add up: in the past 24 hours, 36,000 BTC were traded on Coinbase, accounting for more than 15% of the total market. Coinbase isn't the world's largest exchange (and is technically a broker rather than a conventional exchange -- that duty falls to its GDAX subsidiary) but it's the best known and carries great weight in the cryptocurrency industry.

Great Deal!

[Mikkeles]

I gotta fuckin' pay to use my money!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Use GDAX. The fees are lower (as low as 0) and you already pretty much have an account with them if you have an account with CoinBase. Same username and password and all of that.

This isn't about buying stuff...

[Dzimas]

I gotta fuckin' pay to use my money!

You don't buy tulip bulbs to spend them, you acquire them as an investment. Think long term -- tulip bulbs are a rare commodity that will only increase in price.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

don't we have something else to use whenever crypto news is posted?

Do we? [wikipedia.org] Why break with tradition?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Can tulip bulbs allow you transfer value in a trustless manner between continents in minutes via a distributed decentralized immutable ledger run on a global network? (bitcoin) . Can tulips allow you to run contracts on those transactions without a middleman on a peer to peer distributed turing complete programmable computer network? (ethereum ) Can tulips allow you to transfer value anonymously without a middleman? (monero). Tulips are just flowers. Cryptocurrency is solves problems and isn't going anywhe

Re:

[theweatherelectric]

Cryptocurrency is solves problems and isn't going anywhere.

So.. cryptocurrency is going nowhere?

Standardized protocol

[DrYak]

Yes, but, because the protocol is standardized,

*YOU* get to chose which payment processor company you're paying fees to (you could be using Coinbase, or Bitpay, etc.)
(Unlike if you choose to use PayPal as a system to send-money-over-internet. Then you can only use Pay Pal Inc. as the sole company that provides the service)

Or use an exchange market (Kraken, Bitstamp, etc.)

Or instead of a company you could exchange money-to-bitcoin your self. Either using a platform like localbitcoin or even redit/craiglist/i

Fees

[A10Mechanic]

Spend $20 in bitcoin, pay about $20 in 'Transaction Fees' to make it happen. What would you say if a brick-and-mortar store charged that kind of fee, just to buy something?

Re:

[Scarred Intellect]

Coinbase charges 1%. Credit cards charge 4%.

Re:

[Scarred Intellect]

My 1% came directly from TFS. Sorry to confuse you by referring to the news summary we're discussing.

Re:

[mishehu]

Coinbase charges 1%. Credit cards charge 4%.

Credit cards charge a fee to the merchant at time of transaction, at least in the USA they do. 4% is a very high rate for a merchant to pay. I most commonly hear around 1% or less, depending on whether it's a smaller, low volume store versus a big-box retailer.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No low volume store in the U.S. gets 1%. My main client is a medium sized business (~16 million/year) and they pay 2.4% + $0.30/transaction. Smaller business will never get better rates than e.g. Square @ 2.75% or Venmo @ 3%. Extremely large businesses like Target and Wallmart are down around 1.5%.

Re: Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

Your client needs to renegotiate.

I just shopped around a few different merchant companies for my business. I do need to note I'm in Canada, but do a lot of business in the US and hold US Currency here in Canada.

My business does maybe $30K a year via credit cards (most clients direct deposit to my accounts) and I was quoted 2.4% + $0.10 per transaction. This was Moneris in Canada.

One of my US clients gets ~1.6% + $0.10 with Wells Fargo & Authorize.net. They are on a "cost plus" plan, so the rate can vary

Re:

[Scarred Intellect]

My data was old, my mistake. And wrong. I'd last heard they were 2%-4%, with most around the high 3's...but that was some years ago. A quick google search proves myself wrong. Still, a valid point, I think: we often pay fees to use our money every day.

Re:

[mishehu]

I agree, and even think this is nefarious because it hides that cost from the consumer. And that was no mistake on behalf of the credit card processors.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

>Coinbase charges 1%

Which means you're not using Bitcoin, you're using Coinbase, which defeats the whole purpose of Bitcoin in the first place and leaves you better off using a more traditional method of payment accepted in more locations and with better protections on transactions.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

There's no difference for the purposes of my argument - any time you expect to move Bitcoin, you pay through the nose and you wait a long time (if the network has any popularity at the time of the transaction).

If your transaction happens in a quick and low-cost manner... no Bitcoin was moved, which means none of the selling features of Bitcoin were utilized.

To be really blunt - if you use Coinbase, you're using their private, trusted ledger.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Coinbase charges 1%. Credit cards charge 4%.

And that's to just use their services. To actually transfer via Bitcoin incurs Bitcoin's transaction fee, which is variable and depends on how long you're willing to wait. This fee occurs every time you transfer anything via Bitcoin and in independent of the exchange or whatever.

The fee goes straight to the miners as a reward for locking that transaction into the blockchain. Remember, miners do more than "make" bitcoin - in the early days they created actual bitco

support staff

[Anonymous Coward]

How about they stop having Scrooge McDuck money swims and hire some more support staff?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

We tried, they kept demanding payment in something called 'fiat currency'? whatever that is.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They wanted paying in little Italian cars.

Re:

[VanessaE]

So when someone spends their Fiat currency, do they get their change back in the form of tiny little tires and headlight bulbs?

Re:

[darth dickinson]

No their profits were $1B. FTA:

"Recode reports that the company’s revenue exceeded $1 billion last year, most of it derived from the trading fees it levies. These vary from between 0.25% and 1%. and quickly add up: in the past 24 hours, 36,000 BTC were traded on Coinbase, accounting for more than 15% of the total market."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Revenue is not profit.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[gravewax]

Revenue is not profit.

Re:

[GumphMaster]

The broker company's turn over is the money they bring in from the transaction fees not the total value of the transactions the fees are levied on (that money is someone else's). That $1B revenue from transaction fees would represent something like $100-400B in transactions brokered. The day in which 36,000 BTC was traded represents a commission between 90 and 360BTC: about 990,000 to 3,960,000 USD at present values.

Re:

[Cimexus]

I suspect that's simply because they don't support Australian interbank transfer/payments systems like BSB/account transfers and Bpay etc. Since they aren't Australian there's no reason they'd have this set up, which leaves only outgoing wire transfers which are expensive for them as a business.

What I do is use GDAX to transfer the coins to be sold to an Australian crypto exchange. This is completely free using GDAX (they even eat the BTC transaction fee for you, which is kinda amazing given how high those

Re:

[gravewax]

if they had even an ounce of honesty they would tell Australians that before they made purchases. As it is you only find that out when you try to sell. basically Coinbase is a giant bunch of conartists. I imagine they would have a massive amount of complaints with the financial ombudsman and ACCC by now, surprised really they haven't looked to prosecute them yet.

Re:

[supremebob]

There are a whole new generation of "altcoins" coming out every day to fleece new investors, though. Why go back to Bitcoin, which already has hundreds of (Google searchable) horror stories of people losing everything, and will likely soon have many more?

Re:

[war4peace]

You should've just mentioned it's dead.

Re: Hey guys, did you get out above 15K?

[FuzzyDaddy2]

Netcraft confirms it

Anyone That's Read r/bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

Knows his they make so much money. They simply accidentally lose your money wire or freeze your account. Sure they will pay out for little sums around $1-5k but somehow the $20k + accounts/wires magically get lost.

Re: Anyone That's Read r/bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they don't and you're a fool if you think so. I know many, many people who have withdrawn fiat from them, in large amounts, with zero problems. Go hide under your bridge again.

Re:

[Cimexus]

They don't get lost ... they just take a reaaaallly long time to process and be credited to the account. No doubt they are sitting on the money in the meantime earning interest, of course. Seriously though why does it take over 2 weeks for a standard ACH transfer to show up?

Minimum Fees = $1

[Anonymous Coward]

They always charge me at least 1 USD whenever I buy or sell some crypto currency and almost all of my transactions are under $80. I've profited about $200 off $600 I put in in December by constantly selling high and buying low. They've made at least $40 off me.

Can anyone recommend someone else? I really hate paying a $1 fee to buy/sell $5 even though it still makes me money.

Let's see...

[DontBeAMoran]

2.7 million U.S. dollars equals 409 million Dogecoins.

That's a lot!

As any poker player knows

[SlaveToTheGrind]

You can't beat the rake.

Trading Places

[damonlab]

This reminds me of a quote from the movie Trading Places. Randolph Duke: "The good part, William, is that, no matter whether our clients make money or lose money, Duke & Duke get the commissions."