Brian Armstrong’s Masterclass in Corporate Plagiarism Just Made Coinbase $1.87 Billion

“Robinhood walked so Coinbase could… Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V…”

Well, based on Coinbase’s BIGLY new earnings drop, the man might actually be onto something…

Coinbase (+8%) just crushed earnings (again). Despite Bitcoin spending the entire month of October playing “how low can you go,” Coinbase somehow raked in $1.87 billion in revenue (up 55% YoY) and $1.50 EPS… nearly five times what it made last year. It also doesn’t hurt that, for once, they’re not under investigation… and that our President is so pro-crypto he created his own memecoins (just don’t ask where that money went).

The numbers are batsh*t ridiculous. Transaction revenue jumped 37% to $1 billion as consumer trading volume climbed to $59 billion. Institutional volume hit $236 billion, up 22% from last quarter… helped by Coinbase’s $3 billion acquisition of derivatives exchange Deribit. Apparently, hedge funds think crypto is cool again.

(Source: The Block)

But the real story is in the vision (or the one he copied word for word from Robinhood’s playbook). Armstrong’s “Everything Exchange” is finally coming to life. He told investors Coinbase now supports 40,000 tradable assets (up from just 300), spanning tokenized equities, prediction markets, and other on-chain experiments (whatever that means).

“The idea,” Armstrong said, “is that every asset class will eventually live on-chain.” Quite a 180 in confidence from a guy who once had to clarify to lawmakers that “staking” wasn’t a physical activity.

Remember, Coinbase’s glow-up isn’t happening in a vacuum. Donnie Politics' pro-crypto move (from July’s stablecoin law to a friendlier regulatory tone) has reignited trading across the board. Add in warming U.S.-China relations, and both retail traders and institutions are back to flinging capital at anything ending in “.eth.”

Stablecoins alone brought in $355 million this quarter, and Coinbase’s quiet stake in USDC issuer Circle is looking like the most boringly brilliant move in fintech. The stock’s up 40% this year, and with $433 million in quarterly profit, Armstrong’s bald head might be the closest thing the crypto world has to a crystal ball.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Robinhood and Ethereum as mentioned in the article.