Coinbase Decided Following Strategy's Bitcoin Reserve Playbook ‘Too Risky’: CEO

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has revealed that the crypto exchange considered putting 80% of its balance sheet into Bitcoin—but decided against it over fears it could "kill the company."

During a question-and-answer session with customers, executives were asked whether they missed an opportunity to start amassing BTC sooner, given the company had an eight-year headstart on software firm Strategy.

Armstrong argued that Bitcoin's volatility meant an aggressive approach would have been too risky, especially in Coinbase's early days when key milestones needed to be reached to unlock additional funding rounds.

"If our runway had gone from 18 months—and suddenly it was 12 months, or 10 months—it could have just killed the company entirely," Armstrong said.

He explained that, back when Coinbase was a startup, executives made a "conscious choice about risk," as a sharp pullback in BTC's price at the wrong time would have affected the trading platform's growth.

Nonetheless, Armstrong stressed that the company does hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet, and about 25% of its net cash is currently in crypto.

"We're not going to take 80%, that would be too risky I think," he added.

CFO Alesia Haas told viewers that Coinbase's status as an operating company means that its main focus has been on developing new products and services, as well as onboarding one billion people to crypto.

"We have never thought of ourselves as an investment company, and have not been strategically growing the investment portfolio as a primary business," she said.

Haas went on to reveal that Coinbase's crypto holdings stood at $1.3 billion during the first quarter of 2025, growing by an additional $150 million between January and March. This is mostly BTC along with "a couple" of other digital assets.

"We have plans to grow that—rest assured," she added.

Of course, these reserves pale in comparison to the 555,450 BTC that Strategy has on its balance sheet, which is worth $58 billion at the time of writing.

The software firm first started acquiring BTC back in August 2020, and is currently sitting on paper profits of about $30 billion. Since then, a number of other companies have adopted a similar Bitcoin treasury strategy.

Edited by Stephen Graves.