Coinbase, a leading US exchange, has amassed billions in sales, making it the first cryptocurrency company to enter the Fortune 500.
Coinbase Global (COIN) had a revenue of $7.8 billion in 2021, ranking #437 on Fortune’s list of the 500 largest US corporations by revenue.
Coinbase, which was first listed on the Nasdaq in April 2021, is the first crypto firm to enter the list, which was published on Monday.
Coinbase was one of a few “pandemic winners,” according to Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell, who profited despite the “freakish circumstances” of the second year of a global pandemic.
While Coinbase’s performance is significant, its revenue of $7.8 billion pales in compared to Walmart, the largest Fortune 500 business with $573 billion in revenue.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expects Coinbase and the crypto industry to continue to develop, forecasting that the crypto economy will grow 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.”