New York, Feb 17, 2026, 08:40 EST — Premarket
- Coinbase dropped roughly 2% before the bell, following last week’s volatile moves.
- Bitcoin slips once more, with futures tied to tech names signaling another dip ahead.
- Friday’s PCE inflation data lands next, with investors scanning for signals on rates and appetite for risk.
Coinbase Global (COIN.O) slipped 2% to $161.00 ahead of the bell on Tuesday.
Traders returned from the long U.S. holiday weekend, once again wrestling with the usual dilemma—crypto’s pace is relentless, but related stocks are even quicker on the draw.
Coinbase stands out as a go-to public name for tracking U.S. crypto trading activity. If bitcoin or ether prices drop, trading tends to slow — and so do fee revenues.
Shares finished Friday at $164.32, moving in a $146.16 to $167.65 range, with roughly 32.4 million shares changing hands, according to the company’s stock-quote page.
Early Tuesday, risk appetite took a hit. S&P 500 futures slid 0.5%, with Nasdaq futures down a sharper 0.9%. Bitcoin dropped 1.4%, trading just below $68,000, the Associated Press reported.
Coinbase last week posted a quarterly loss after a slowdown in crypto trading during a wider digital-asset selloff. Transaction revenue dropped. But subscription and services revenue climbed, boosted by income from stablecoins—tokens meant to maintain a fixed value, typically pegged to the dollar.
Coinbase told shareholders in a Feb. 12 letter that it bought back $1.7 billion of Class A shares during the fourth quarter and up to Feb. 10, leaving the company with $11.3 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the close of 2025. Transaction revenue came in around $420 million through Feb. 10, while the first quarter’s subscription and services revenue projection landed between $550 million and $630 million.
Chief Financial Officer Alesia Haas, speaking to analysts, said the company put $1.7 billion toward share buybacks, adding that both buybacks and bitcoin acquisitions are part of its playbook when markets fluctuate.
Traders are keeping an eye on Robinhood and publicly traded bitcoin miners too. These crypto-linked stocks tend to move with the larger coins, especially when the market gets choppy.
But it’s not hard to see the risks. Should bitcoin extend its drop and volatility fade, retail activity could dry up fast, slicing into transaction revenue. Policy uncertainty remains a shadow over the sector, and even now, a sharp jump in trading can test exchange systems despite all the infrastructure upgrades of recent years.
All eyes shift to Friday, when the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index lands—this is the inflation measure the Federal Reserve tracks most closely. That’s set for Feb. 20, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis calendar.
