Morning Minute: Coinbase Misses Earnings on Surprise Loss

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes or less, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall another 1-2% while stocks are green; BTC at $80.2k
• Coinbase misses earnings with a surprise net loss; prediction markets are booming
• Tom Lee says his ETH buying may slow as he approaches 5%
• AWS launches new system with Coinbase and Stripe to let AI agents use stables
• Tether’s Medical AI model QVAC MedPsy crushes benchmarks, can run on a smart phone

📉 Coinbase Misses Earnings, But Prediction Market Booms

Coinbase reported Q1 2026 earnings on Thursday after the bell and the headline numbers were rough.

• Revenue came in at $1.41 billion against a $1.48 billion consensus, a 31% year-over-year decline.
• The EPS was a net loss of $1.49 per share against analyst expectations for a $0.27 profit (big miss)
• Consumer transaction revenue fell 45% year-over-year to $734 million.
• Operating expenses rose 22% to $1.5 billion.

COIN fell 4% in after-hours trading.

But on the positive side, institutional transaction revenue grew 31% year-over-year to $185 million, driven by record Deribit derivatives volumes. And prediction markets have become Coinbase’s fastest-scaling product ever, reaching $100 million in annualized revenue in less than two months. Retail derivatives crossed $200 million annualized.

Coinbase also disclosed a new all-time high in crypto trading volume market share, meaning it is taking share from competitors even as the overall market is down. CEO Brian Armstrong said on the call: “The short-term macro environment was challenging, but the underlying business has never been stronger.”

The question heading into Q2 is whether the structural products (derivatives, prediction markets, stablecoins, agentic payments) can grow fast enough to offset the fee compression in spot trading.

🥶 Tom Lee Is Slowing Down His ETH Buys

Tom Lee told investors Thursday that Bitmine may begin slowing its Ethereum purchases as the firm approaches the 5% of total ETH supply target it set when it launched its treasury strategy.

Total holdings now stand at approximately 5.18 million ETH, worth roughly $11.8 billion at current prices and representing 4.29% of Ethereum’s total supply. The firm has 84% of its holdings staked through its MAVAN validator network, generating approximately $297 million in annualized staking revenue.

The move makes sense as he approaches his target of 5%, but still—markets won’t like it. Tom Lee has been the primary institutional buyer of ETH for months now. And that bid is disappearing.

Looks like it might be retail’s turn to step up and take over the buying…

💰 AWS Just Put Stablecoin Payments Inside Enterprise AI

Amazon Web Services launched a new system built with Coinbase and Stripe that lets AI agents use stablecoins to autonomously pay for APIs, data feeds, web content, and MCP servers during task execution, without human intervention per transaction.

It is the first time a major cloud provider has natively integrated crypto payment rails into enterprise AI infrastructure.

Coinbase Head of Infrastructure Growth Brian Foster commented: “Enterprises have been telling us the same thing: They want agents that can transact, but they can’t get past legal and compliance review. AWS developers can now give their agents financial autonomy in a comprehensive managed solution.”

The initial release covers micropayments for APIs, MCP servers, and paywalled content. Future versions will support hotel bookings, travel reservations, and broader merchant purchases, and Warner Bros. Discovery is already testing it for premium content transactions.

The race to build infrastructure for agentic commerce heats up…

🧑‍⚕️ Tether Just Launched a Medical AI That Fits in Your Pocket

Tether’s AI team launched a medical AI model Thursday called QVAC MedPsy that runs directly on a smartphone—no internet connection, no cloud server, no data leaving your device. Think of it as a medical-grade AI assistant that lives entirely on your phone.

MedPsy is built for psychiatric and medical assessment. It can help evaluate symptoms, support clinical decision-making, and assist with mental health screening—the kind of tasks that normally require a specialist, a hospital portal, and a data connection. The model is designed to work in rural clinics, low-bandwidth environments, field medicine, and anywhere else where internet access is unreliable or patient privacy is non-negotiable. Because everything runs locally, no patient records, diagnostic queries, or clinical notes ever touch an external server.

The performance is where MedPsy really shines, outperforming medical AI models that are 16 times larger in recent benchmarks. To put that in context—most AI gets smarter by getting bigger, requiring more computing power and more infrastructure. Tether built a model that punches well above its weight by focusing on efficiency rather than size, making it small enough to run on a phone while remaining accurate enough for clinical use.

Tether’s investments outside of crypto continue to pay off. And we all stand to benefit…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red down another 1-2%; BTC -1% at $80.2k; ETH -2% at $2,290; SOL -1% at $88.6; HYPE -1% at $42.5
• Ondo (+15%), NEAR (+5%), INJ (+5%) and VVV (+5%) led top movers
• Oil rebounded 2% at $94.5; Gold -0.2% at $4,720
• Stock futures are green ahead of the April jobs report
• The Senate Banking Committee is expected to present a Clarity Act markup as early as tomorrow, with draft legislative text already circulating to select industry stakeholders ahead of a potential Thursday vote
• Tether Head of Government Affairs Jesse Spiro warned at Consensus Miami that the November midterms could have a “seismic impact” on the industry’s trajectory, potentially reversing the regulatory progress made over the past year if the balance of power in Congress shifts
• Kraken parent Payward agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for $600 million, a stablecoin payments and corporate card infrastructure firm operating across Southeast Asia
• Tether has frozen $515M of USDT across Ethereum and Tron over the past 30 days
• JP Morgan analysts project that Saylor’s Strategy could buy $30B worth of BTC this year

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE -3%, SHIB even, PEPE even, PENGU -2%, TRUMP even, BONK +1%, SPX -1%, FARTCOIN -3%
• Hanta (+300%), Hentai (+400%), and Bull (+20%) led notable movers
• The Hanta memecoin rallied after Pump founder Alon tweeted it as a way to make money off the virus, comparing the meme to prediction markets

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Solv Protocol announced that it will migrate $700M+ in tokniezed Bitcoin infra from LayerZero to Chainlink following the KelpDAO exploit
• Hyperliquid added a 2nd prediction market to its Outcomes, both releated to BTC price

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders are slightly green on the day; Punks even at 31 ETH, BAYC +2% at 9.99 ETH, Pudgy even at 5.28 ETH; Hypurr’s -1% at 335 HYPE
• Slonks (+8%), Kodas (+9%) and Gift of Time (+14%) led notable movers