Coinbase Shatters Expectations with Stellar Q3 Performance - Trading Revenue Soars Past ¥154 Billion

Digital asset giant Coinbase just delivered a knockout quarter that left Wall Street analysts scrambling to upgrade their forecasts.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Trading revenue exploding beyond ¥154 billion marks a watershed moment for cryptocurrency's mainstream adoption. While traditional finance veterans keep waiting for the digital asset bubble to burst, Coinbase keeps printing money faster than the Fed's quantitative easing program.

Market Dominance Cemented

This performance isn't just beating expectations—it's demolishing them. The platform continues to attract both retail and institutional investors despite regulatory headwinds and economic uncertainty.

Another quarter, another reminder that while traditional banks debate blockchain integration, Coinbase actually executes. Maybe the suits should stop worrying about crypto volatility and start worrying about their own relevance.

Amazon builds Project Rainier to run Anthropic models

On Wednesday, Amazon opened a new $11 billion AI data center, called Project Rainier, designed to host and train models from the Claude chatbot developer Anthropic.

Amazon has already committed $8 billion to Anthropic, and said the startup will use 1 million custom Trainium2 chips by the end of 2025.

The move comes as cloud players battle over AI deals, and Amazon’s Project Rainier is intended to silence concerns that the company is falling behind. Anthropic also expanded its relationship with Google in a multi-billion-dollar cloud partnership last week. Meanwhile, Meta signed major cloud contracts with Google and Oracle.

Amazon’s AI efforts also include Q, a chatbot aimed at business users, and Bedrock, a generative AI platform for cloud clients. The company said 250 million shoppers used its retail assistant Rufus this year, and 60% of them were more likely to make a purchase after using the chatbot.

Despite doubling down on AI, Amazon is cutting costs elsewhere. On Tuesday, the company confirmed it will lay off 14,000 corporate employees. The MOVE is aimed at making the company faster and less bureaucratic.

“We’re reorganizing to respond faster, especially around AI,” a spokesperson said. The layoffs pushed severance costs to $1.8 billion for the quarter. Amazon said the current employee count is 1.58 million, a 2% jump from last year.

Amazon posts flat income, settles with FTC over Prime

Amazon reported $17.4 billion in operating income, which was flat compared to the same period last year. But the number includes two major items: a $2.5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over “deceptive” Prime subscription practices, and the $1.8 billion in severance tied to its latest round of layoffs.

Looking ahead, the company said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to land between $206 billion and $213 billion, with the midpoint, $209.5 billion, above the $208 billion analysts had penciled in.

Expected operating income ranges between $21 billion and $26 billion, compared to the average Wall Street forecast of $23.8 billion.

Andy said tariffs could still affect Amazon’s performance. During last quarter’s call, he noted that the tariff increases under President Donald TRUMP hadn’t hurt consumer demand or forced any price spikes… at least not yet.

But trade policies remain on Amazon’s radar. The company also warned that guidance could change depending on how things evolve politically.

The company’s Q3 release came just over a week after an AWS outage that lasted more than 15 hours, knocking multiple websites offline. Microsoft also experienced outages with its Azure and 365 platforms just before its earnings report.

Despite those issues, all three companies remain locked in a race for AI dominance through cloud infrastructure.

Amazon is still the biggest cloud infrastructure provider in the world, but the race for generative AI dominance is forcing everyone to spend fast and scale faster.

The Rainier center, the Anthropic chip deal, and new AI services are Amazon’s current answers. Now Wall Street will be watching if those moves are enough to close the gap on its faster-growing competitors.

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