Key Highlights
- Brian Armstrong sold over 1.5 million Coinbase shares since April 2025, generating approximately $550 million.
- The disposals continued through a severe crypto slump, with Bitcoin plunging 52% from its October 2025 peak of $126,198 to as low as $59,880, erasing over $2 trillion in market cap.
- COIN shares have dropped to $153.20 as of February 12, 2026, down 60% from its 2021 listing-day close, underperforming broader markets as the company gears up for Q4 2025 earnings.
Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase Global Inc., has unloaded more than 1.5 million shares of the company’s stock since April 2025, pocketing roughly $550 million in proceeds.
According to transaction data compiled by Bloomberg and highlighted by Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s head of digital assets research, the half a billion dollar selling was consistent despite COIN price fluctuating drastically throughout the period. Sigel quipped that buying now would be a “bold move,” deferring to Armstrong for the “first move.”
Armstrong’s disposals, executed through his living trust, are part of a pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plan, a common mechanism for insiders to sell shares without running afoul of securities laws.
Still, the volume and timing have drawn scrutiny, especially as Coinbase prepares to report its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings. Analysts expect the results to reflect the broader market’s woes, with reduced trading volumes and ETF inflows hitting the company’s bottom line.
Armstrong’s selling amid broader drawdown
Armstrong’s offloading has persisted through a punishing period for cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin suffering a 52% plunge from its October 2025 peak of $126,198. It dipped as low as $59,880 on February 6, coinciding with the sell-off in stock market. Following the largest cryptocurrency, Ether and Solana fared even worse, dropping 24% and 26% in the past week alone.
This recent drawdown, begun since mid-January, erased over $2 trillion from the total crypto market capitalization. The major driving factors of this outflow were waning retail interest, correlations with slumping tech stocks, and a slowdown in institutional adoption.
Armstrong began his sales in April 2025, a time when Coinbase’s stock was trading above $300 and continued in July 2025 when it went to new all-time high of $444.65 amid optimism over regulatory clarity and Bitcoin’s rally.
The highest volume came in June 2025, when Armstrong sold 336,265 shares on June 25 at $355.37 each – his single largest transaction, netting over $119 million. Selling continued briskly into July, with significant disposals on July 14, 15, and 16, 2025, as part of a cluster of trades that month totaling hundreds of thousands of shares.
By early January 2026, he offloaded another 40,000 shares at $254.92, bringing the nine-month tally to 88 separate sales with no recorded buys.
COIN Stock: Listing, History, and Current Price
Founded in 2012 by Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, Coinbase had grown into the largest U.S. crypto exchange, capitalizing on Bitcoin’s mainstream breakthrough. It made its market debut on April 14, 2021, through a direct listing on the Nasdaq and bypassing the traditional IPO route.
The stock opened at $381 and surged to an intraday high of $429 on its first day, valuing the company at over $100 billion and marking a milestone for the crypto industry. At the time of publishing, COIN price rests at $153.20, down 5.37% in the past session—as per Yahoo Finance data.
As of February 12, 2026, COIN has shed about 60% from its listing-day close, underperforming broader markets but outperforming many altcoins that cratered 79% on median in 2025. With a market cap of around $42 billion, Coinbase still remains a bellwether for the crypto sector.
Also read: Binance ‘Did Not’ Cause the October 10 Crypto Crash: co-CEO Clarifies
