Top US Exchange Coinbase Becomes First Crypto Firm To Be Listed on Fortune 500

Leading US exchange Coinbase has earned billions in revenue to become the first crypto company to break into the Fortune 500.

Coinbase Global (COIN) grossed over $7.8 billion in revenue in 2021, placing COIN at #437 on Fortune’s ranking of the 500 largest US companies by revenue.

Coinbase is the first crypto firm to join the list, published on Monday, and was first listed on the Nasdaq in April 2021.

Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell says Coinbase was one of a few “pandemic winners” who managed to profit despite the “freakish circumstances” of the second year of a global pandemic.

While Coinbase’s achievement is a milestone for the company, its $7.8 billion in revenue pales in comparison to the #1 Fortune 500 company, Walmart, which has $573 billion in revenue.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expects Coinbase and the crypto space as a whole to continue growing, recently predicting the crypto economy will explode to 15% of global GDP in the coming years.

“In my mind, this is a little bit like the early days of the Internet, where you saw the birth of e-commerce in the late ’90s or early 2000s, and now fast forward 20 years, e-commerce, I think, is something like 15% of global GDP.

And I think if you fast forward 20 years from here, the crypto economy is going to represent probably a large portion like that, 15% of global GDP.”

Armstrong also says he believes corporations will adopt crypto in the future on the same level that they have currently taken up the internet.

“I actually think, like in the same way that most companies use the internet now, I think most companies are going to end up using crypto in some way, shape or form in the future.”