Coinbase Global, Inc. COIN

The business

Coinbase is the regulated front door to cryptocurrency in America. Retail customers buy and sell there because it is the one that will still exist next year, and they pay a spread for that comfort. Institutions custody there for the same reason. Around the core sits a growing set of subscription lines: staking rewards, custody fees, and a revenue share on the USDC stablecoin, which pays Coinbase a portion of the interest earned on the dollars backing it.

The subscription half was supposed to make this a software company rather than an exchange. It has not, and the reason is that most of those lines are still downstream of the same variable: how much crypto is worth and how much of it people move.