Coinbase held back on Bitcoin pivot; now buys crypto derivative giant Deribit

Crypto exchange Coinbase recently revealed that it would have adopted a Bitcoin-heavy treasury strategy, however, chose to be neutral instead. In an interview with Bloomberg, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said, “there were definitely moments where we thought, should we put 80% of our balance sheet into Bitcoin?”

But he went on to explain that the company made a conscious decision to manage risk, as such a strategy could strain the exchanges liquidity and operations. Currently, Coinbase is the 9th largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, holding 9,480 Bitcoin, worth $988 million, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.

Also speaking in the interview was Coinbase’s CFO Alesia Haas who said that the company deliberately avoided entering into competition with its own customers by betting on specific cryptocurrencies.In its latest earnings report on May 8, the firm revealed a $153 million crypto purchase in Q1, primarily in BTC.

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Interestingly, a Coin Telegraph report shows that over 100 public companies now hold Bitcoin in their treasury, while another 40 exchange-traded fund issuers, 26 private firms and 12 nation states have also reported holding the cryptocurrency. At the start of the year, there were just 64 publicly traded companies that held Bitcoin, proof that more and more organisations, want to adopt Bitcoin.

At the start of the year, 64 publicly traded companies held Bitcoin on their balance sheet

We're now up to 79

A 23% increase in less than two months

I cannot emphasize enough how bullish this is

Corporate adoption alone will get BTC to $1,000,000 — no SBR's needed pic.twitter.com/HLfUDmVOD9
— Mitchell Askew ✝️🇺🇸🌞 (@MitchellHODL) February 13, 2025

Coinbase acquires crypto derivatives platform Deribit for $2.9 billion

On May 8th, 2025, Coinbase also announced that it was acquiring crypto derivatives platform Deribit for $2.9 billion. The acquisition will expand Coinbase’s footprint in the crypto derivatives market making it a ‘global leader’ a press release said.

The company said that the cost of acquisition consisted of $700 million in cash and 11 million shares of Coinbase class A common stock.Deribit facilitated more than $1 trillion in trading volume last year and has about $30 billion of current open interest on the platform.