Coinbase

Coinbase is one of the largest and most influential centralized exchanges in the crypto industry, founded in San Francisco in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. What began as a simple website for buying Bitcoin with a bank transfer has grown into a publicly traded financial company serving retail users, active traders and large institutions across more than 100 countries.

Coinbase runs several products under one brand: a beginner-friendly app for buying and holding assets, Coinbase Advanced for active traders, Coinbase Prime for institutional custody and trading, and Coinbase Wallet, a separate self-custody app that lets people hold their own private keys instead of trusting the exchange. The company also incubated Base, a low-cost layer-2 network built on Ethereum that has attracted significant decentralized finance activity and institutional interest.

In April 2021, Coinbase became the first major crypto company to go public in the United States, listing its shares on Nasdaq under the ticker COIN through a direct listing rather than a traditional IPO. It has since grown into one of the world's largest custodians of Bitcoin, and in 2025 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its multi-year enforcement lawsuit against the company, part of a broader shift toward clearer U.S. crypto regulation.

Like any exchange that holds customer funds, Coinbase carries custodial risk: assets kept on the platform depend on the company's security practices and solvency rather than the user's own keys, and its trading fees are generally higher than many smaller competitors. Despite that, it remains one of the most widely used regulated on-ramps between traditional banking and the broader cryptocurrency market.