Coinbase to Invest $500 Million in Bitcoin and Other Cryptos

Coinbase, the largest US-based crypto brokerage, is going to purchase $500 million in cryptocurrencies and will additionally allocate 10 percent of its quarterly net income for future investments in digital assets.

The plans of the company were first revealed on Thursday with a tweet from the Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, followed by a detailed announcement.

We recently received board approval to purchase over $500M of crypto on our balance sheet to add to our existing holdings. And we’ll be investing 10% of all profit going forward in crypto. I expect this percentage to keep growing over time as the cryptoeconomy matures.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) August 19, 2021

While Coinbase is not the only public company to invest in Bitcoin, it certainly is the first to purchase altcoins. “This means we will become the first publicly-traded company to hold Ethereum, Proof of Stake assets, DeFi tokens and many other crypto assets supported for trading on our platform, in addition to Bitcoin, on our balance sheet,” the exchange stated.

Sitting on a Cash Pile

Coinbase went public earlier this year and is now aggressively expanding its global presence. Earlier, the company revealed that it had ‘held Bitcoin and other crypto assets’ on its balance sheet, but did not specify any details.

The latest decision of Coinbase’s crypto investment came after a report by The Wall Street Journal that detailed that the company is sitting on a cash stockpile of $4.4 billion, which it was hoarding to continue business growth tackling potential business risks.

“Our investments will be continually deployed over a multi-year window using a dollar cost averaging strategy. We are long-term investors and will only divest under select circumstances, such as an asset delisting from our platform,” the announcement added. 

“We may increase our allocation over time as the crypto economy matures.”

Moreover, Coinbase is known for facilitating large Bitcoin transactions for companies like MicroStrategy and Tesla, both of which are holding more than a billion dollars in Bitcoin. Furthermore, the exchange specified that it will execute all its own crypto purchasing transactions ‘via our over-the-counter desk or away from our exchange to avoid any conflict of interest with our customers’.