A Look At Coinbase’s Ongoing Shopping Spree

Coinbase has been on a buying spree.

On Oct. 21, the publicly traded crypto exchange announced that it is acquiring early-stage investing platform Echo for $375 million in cash and equity.

Notably, the acquisition marked the eighth buy for the San Francisco-based company in 2025 so far, according to The Wall Street Journal. Of those eight deals, three involved undisclosed businesses.

Overall, since its 2012 inception, Coinbase has acquired dozens of companies, per Crunchbase data. Besides Echo, it announced purchases of the following startups in 2025:

• In January, it acquired Stryk, the Cyprus-based unit of BUX, as part of a European expansion. Stryk offers CFD trading services to European residents through an app. Financial terms were not disclosed
• Also in January, Coinbase picked up Spindl, a 3-year-old San Francisco-based startup that developed a blockchain-based attribution system to help businesses accelerate user growth.
• In May, it acquired Deribit, a 10-year-old cryptocurrency derivatives exchange offering options, futures and spot trading for digital assets based in the Netherlands.
• Then in July, Coinbase acquired Liquifi, a 4-year-old San Francisco-based startup that helps crypto companies automate their token vesting and lockups, and manage their token cap table. Liquifi was a self-described “Carta for crypto.”
• Now it has announced plans to buy Echo, an onchain digital platform that helps communities invest together and aims to give founders more options for their cap table.

Coinbase’s buying sprees seem to come in spurts, according to the data.

Crypto’s crash and recovery

For example, in 2018, it acquired eight known companies. And then in 2021, it picked up seven known companies. But most years, it acquired only one or two companies.

Interestingly, 2018 was defined by what has been described as the “Great Crypto Crash,” or a massive market sell-off after the boom that took place in 2017. Things had rebounded by 2021, which saw a bull market for crypto and the rise of NFTs and DeFi. That November, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $68,000.

After a bumpy few years, which saw the arrests of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao, Bitcoin has rebounded, surging to an all-time high in 2025. Prices reached $113,156.57 on Oct. 15.

In announcing its plan to acquire Echo, Coinbase said the two companies shared a similar mission of “democratizing early-stage investing, so that more people can support the next generation of breakthrough companies.”

The buy complemented its earlier acquisition of Liquifi, Coinbase said, noting that: “While Liquifi strengthened our ability to support builders at the start of their journey, Echo extends that support into fundraising.”

The largest of its acquisitions in 2025 so far, though, was its $2.9 billion buy of Deribit.

Meanwhile, Coinbase’s market cap as of Oct. 23 hovered just under $83 billion, while its stock is up over 25% year to date.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman