Standard Chartered: Coinbase ‘Proactively Sold’ $37 Million of Ethereum in Q4
The post Standard Chartered: Coinbase ‘Proactively Sold’ $37 Million of Ethereum in Q4 appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
An analyst from multinational bank Standard Chartered believes that crypto exchange Coinbase “proactively sold” 12,652 Ethereum (approximately $37 million) throughout Q4 2024. They explained that Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base drives demand for Ethereum but the company’s profit taking is hurting the underlying blockchain’s price action. Standard Chartered slashed its 2025 price target for Ethereum from $10,000 to $4,000 earlier this week. At the time, Geoff Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Assets Research at the bank, claimed that layer-2 network Base had removed $50 billion from ETH’s market cap—now, he’s saying this is because of profit taking. “My view is that increased activity on Base increases demand for ETH in the first instance,” Kendrick shared with Decrypt. “But then all of Base’s profits (which are circa 80% of all Base revenue) are sold (ETH-USD selling) to effectively repatriate profits back to Coinbase.” To back up his claim, the analyst points to Coinbase’s quarterly Ethereum holdings for investments and operations which Kendrick then subtracted from the Base profits. “This tells me that in Q4 2024 Coinbase proactively sold 12,652 ETH,” he explained. “Over the 3 quarters the net proactive selling was 1,558 ETH. So while there are only 3 quarters of relevant post-Dencun data so far, I think we can conclude that Coinbase is not in the business of HODLing Base’s ETH profits.” Taking the average price in Q4 2024, using the quarter’s open and close, this works out to approximately $37.68 million sold by Coinbase. Ethereum’s Decun upgrade went live in March of last year and significantly reduced the gas fees on layer-2 networks. Since then, the analyst believes, Coinbase has shown its intention to sell as part of a “normal risk adjusted decision process.” A spokesperson for Coinbase told Decrypt that Base, “earns ETH from sequencer fees, and the ETH…
Filed under: News - @ March 20, 2025 6:27 pm