Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle Feel the Weak Crypto Market
Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle are seeing their quarterly results come under pressure from lower trading volumes. Growth in USDC and new products like prediction markets is still offering little cushion.
Key Takeaways
- Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle saw their results come under pressure from a weaker crypto market and falling trading volumes.
- Circle reported lower reserve income, despite growth in USDC usage and a larger stablecoin market.
- New products like prediction markets and payments are growing, but they still are not offsetting the drop in trading revenue.
Crypto companies have been looking for years for revenue beyond buying and selling bitcoin. The latest quarterly results from Coinbase, Robinhood, and Circle show that this strategy still offers little protection when the crypto market cools off. As prices weakened, the three companies also came under pressure.
Trading Remains Vulnerable
Coinbase and Robinhood reported weaker revenue from crypto trading last week. Coinbase saw transaction revenue in the third quarter fall 23% to $590 million (€528 million), while consumer spot volume dropped 9% from the previous quarter. Institutional transaction revenue also fell, down 8% quarter over quarter.
Robinhood has broadened its business over the past few years from a stock app into retirement accounts, banking products, and other financial services. Coinbase has done something similar with custody, stablecoins, lending, and prediction markets. Still, the numbers show that more products do not automatically mean more stable revenue.
StoneX analyst Mark Palmer said Coinbase's results show that the company is more than just a lever on crypto trading volumes. Barclays analyst Benjamin Budish, meanwhile, pointed to the ongoing dependence on spot crypto trading as a major challenge.
Stablecoins Bring in Less
Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, reported an 8% drop in reserve income to $658 million (€589 million) in its latest quarterly report. USDC supply stood at $73.9 billion (€66.2 billion) at the end of September, almost unchanged from a year earlier. Circle also cut 5% of its workforce.
Circle's revenue did rise 17% to $865 million (€775 million), but $182 million (€163 million) of that came from the presale of tokens for Arc, the company's new blockchain. Without that sale, revenue would actually have been about 8% lower than a year earlier, according to the figures. That shows how heavily Circle still relies on the income generated from the reserves backing USDC.
The broader stablecoin market kept growing in the meantime. In August 2026, total market value was around $308 billion (€276 billion), with USDT and USDC together making up about 83% of the market. Still, more usage does not automatically mean issuers keep more margin. At Coinbase, revenue from USDC on the platform did rise, but after the rewards the company pays out to users, the growth remained limited.
New Growth Still Is Not Enough
There are clear signs that new products are gaining ground. At Circle, USDC transaction volume rose 49% year over year to $13.9 trillion (€12.4 trillion). The payments network reached an annualized volume of $41.3 billion (€37 billion), and the number of wallets holding more than $10 (€8.96) in USDC increased 16%.
Coinbase is also seeing growth in prediction markets. Daily users of that product rose by more than 60% from the previous quarter, and prediction markets and derivatives now account for about a quarter of transaction revenue. Even so, the margins on these products remain a point of debate, especially now that the crypto market is weaker and trading revenue is falling.
For European crypto readers, this matters because it shows how quickly revenue at major players can shift between trading, stablecoins, and new products. The numbers also make clear that stablecoins are becoming more important as a usage layer in crypto, but that this growth does not automatically lead to higher profitability for the companies behind them. That ties into the broader debate over how USDC economics are under pressure as competitors and partners try to claim a bigger share of reserve income.