The board of Directors of Coinbase has approved adding $500 million in cryptocurrency assets to its balance sheet, CEO Brian Armstrong announced on Twitter. In addition, it will place 10% of its profits in cryptocurrency in the future.
During its preparation for the direct listing in February, Coinbase published an S-1 filing showing that it held an estimated $365 million worth of crypto assets. Two hundred and thirty-five million dollars were in Bitcoin, 53 million dollars in Ethereum, 49 million dollars in stablecoins, and 34 million dollars in other cryptographic assets.
Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchange company that was founded in 2012. The company ranked fourth for Bitcoin holdings among all companies, but MicroStrategy, a cloud software company, and Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer, ranked ahead of it. Tesla bought its first BTC last year.
Despite accounting rules and treasury management principles, some thought a cryptocurrency-native company would have accrued more over that period.
“Our board of directors recently approved the addition of over $500 million of crypto to our balance sheet. All future profits will be invested in crypto at 10%. As the crypto economy matures, this percentage will continue to grow,” Armstrong said.
Coinbase’s board, however, has been convinced it can diversify its holdings after back-to-back quarterly profits of up to $800 million in Q1 and $1.6 billion in Q2.
Since the beginning of 2018, the exchange has enjoyed high trading volumes despite a slump in cryptocurrency prices, with Bitcoin sliding from its perch above $65k to $30k over the last quarter.