Where it came from
Coinbase's annual report sets out the corporate history plainly: the business was "initially incorporated in May 2012 as Coinbase, Inc., a Delaware corporation", and in January 2014 Coinbase Global, Inc. was formed as the holding company above it. The holding company converted to a Texas corporation on 15 December 2025. Brian Armstrong, named in the filing as co-founder and chief executive officer, still controls a majority of the voting power through Class B shares.
Class A shares began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker COIN on 14 April 2021, by direct listing rather than a public offering.
What it does
Coinbase runs a custodial exchange, meaning it holds customer assets and executes trades on its own books. Around that sit a custody business, a staking service, and a subsidiary chartered by New York as a limited purpose trust company. Being listed is the structural difference from most of this directory: the company files audited accounts, and its risk factors and litigation are on the public record whether it likes it or not.
On the record
Three matters, all with primary documents.
In March 2021 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a settled order requiring Coinbase, Inc. to pay a USD 6.5 million penalty for what it called reckless false, misleading or inaccurate reporting of transactions on its GDAX platform between January 2015 and September 2018, and found the company vicariously liable for wash trades placed by a former employee in 2016.
In January 2023 the New York State Department of Financial Services announced a settlement with Coinbase, Inc. over anti-money-laundering failures: a USD 50 million penalty plus USD 50 million to be invested in compliance over two years, with an independent monitor already in place. The Department said the firm's backlog had grown past 100,000 unreviewed transaction monitoring alerts by late 2021.
In June 2023 the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Coinbase in the Southern District of New York over operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency. The company reports that on 28 February 2025 the parties jointly stipulated to dismissal with prejudice, and that the case is concluded. Nothing was adjudicated.
Listing here is not endorsement.