Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas Holds Over $14 Million in Company Shares

On Aug. 10, Coinbase reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2021, which were above analysts’ expectations. The largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange brought in $2 billion in revenues with a net income of $1.6 billion for the second quarter.

The company saw its total trading volume increase nearly 38 percent sequentially. Although most users on the exchange are retail traders, more institutional traders and hedge funds are getting into the crypto game. Institutional trading on the exchange rose 47 percent sequentially, while the retail trading volume rose 21 percent.

“We now have 10 percent of the top 100 hedge funds measured by AUM (assets under management), now clients of Coinbase and engaging with the crypto economy,” Haas said on the Coinbase second-quarter earnings call. “This is really a new theme that we’re seeing, that more and more hedge funds are making the allocation of the crypto economy and engaging in multiple assets on our platform.”

Coinbase also added more assets in the second quarter of 2021 than it did in all of 2020. Now, the exchange offers 83 assets for trading and 142 assets for custody.

Coinbase went public through a direct listing in April. Haas and the rest of Coinbase’s management came under scrutiny during the public listing when some people accused them of “dumping” their shares in the company.

The accusations were due to misinformation circulating in the press and on social media, Coinbase officials said in a blog post on April 27. Since the company went public via a direct listing, existing shareholders had to sell portions of their holdings to create a market, particularly in the first days of trading, the company stated in the blog post.

Although some reports said that Haas had sold 100 percent of her Coinbase holdings, she actually only sold 15 percent of her total outstanding equity, the company said.

“Coinbase executives and early investors sold portions of their total holdings to create liquidity on the opening day of trading for Coinbase stock. These sales are critical to a direct listing. Despite misguided commentary on social media and in some news outlets, these sales represented small percentages of their overall holdings,” the blog post stated.