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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

They also did over $1B in revenue last year

Actual revenue, or just market trading volume? If the latter, $1bn sounds like a lot but actually isn’t really.

I believe it's actual revenue

Might still not be that much, if earnings through exchange rate gains were also part of their revenue. btc made what? Over 1000% in that year? If they pooled earlier in the year that are huge gains. If it's only from their 1.5% cut, it is really impressive.

Exchanges are literally printing money. I think nearly a million Ether a day was traded on Gdax at the top.

At $1,400 you're talking $1.4bn a day in trading volume, on (at least) half of which they take a 0.3% fee. That's $2.1m a day, just from ETH. Then there's Bitcoin and Litecoin. Bitcoin probably makes a similar amount. And their "simplified" website on which they charge higher fees.

They would be fractional if they were literally printing money.

Right, it's Tether which is doing that, not Coinbase!

It was fee revenue

It's gotta be actual revenue. $1bn in market trading volume for Coinbase sounds tiny. That's only a few million per day.

Actual revenue https://www.recode.net/2018/1/22/16911692/cryptocurrency-bit...

> Recode has learned from industry sources

First, it's unconfirmed. What exactly does "industry sources" mean? That someone who knows someone who works there said "oh ya we make a billion dollars dude".

Second, it could also mean "gross revenue" in some form.

I don't believe any of this stuff until someone reputable confirms some level of it. Doesn't it seem strange that they made "exactly $1b"? Not $750M, or $1.2B, or $500M, but $1B?

I think the jury is still out.

Doesn't it seem strange that they made "exactly $1b"?

That would be strange, but the article doesn't say that, it says "over $1 billion".

Of course it's not the latter. $1bn is like a couple of days of trading volume at GDAX alone.

Profit is what matters. I imagine it's pretty large also.

I guarantee you they didn’t spend $1 billion last year

Why would they be raising VC then?

Most of that $$ was loaded towards the end of the year, so they were in the middle of the raise as it ramped up insanely. They closed the raise before the revenue was hitting that mark, announced it in August, then it turned out to be likely irrelevant when they made another $600m to finish 2017 and no signs of stopping (although slowing) in 2018.

Founder cashing out some might also be a reason.

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