Coinbase Doesn't Plan to Follow Strategy's Bitcoin Buying Footsteps

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said the company has no plans to follow Strategy's (formerly MicroStrategy) strategy of investing corporate reserves in bitcoin.

According to him, over the 12 years of work, the management has repeatedly discussed the possibility of transferring a significant portion of funds into the first cryptocurrency, but each time rejected the idea due to the risks to the sustainability of the business.

“We’ve thought about it many times over the last few years: should we put 80% of our savings into Bitcoin? But we knew that would be a disaster for the company if the market went down sharply,” Armstrong said in an interview published by Bloomberg.

He emphasized that Coinbase's priority remains prudent capital management and risk minimization, especially in the context of high volatility in the crypto market. The platform's CFO Alicia Haas added that investing in Bitcoin would create a conflict of interest.

"We don't want to compete with our customers who already own cryptocurrencies. Our job is to maintain trust, not to become a crypto fund," she said.

According to its Q1 2025 report, Coinbase holds $1.3 billion in crypto assets, including BTC, ETH, and other tokens. The company plans to increase its share of investments in digital currencies, but without taking any risky decisions.

Earlier, it was reported that the American crypto exchange Coinbase said that about 15% of all Bitcoin transactions on the platform are now carried out through the second-layer Lightning Network, designed to speed up and reduce the cost of transfers.