Coinbase spent 5 years building a life raft away from Bitcoin and still managed to lose $359M

Coinbase told investors on Thursday that 88% of its second-quarter net revenue came from something other than Bitcoin spot trading. The same release reported a $359.5 million net loss under US accounting rules, the company's third consecutive losing quarter.Both numbers describe the same three months. Taken together, they get closer to the truth about Coinbase than either one does alone.The arrangement the company carried into its 2021 listing was easy to understand. Retail customers traded more when Bitcoin went up, and they paid a fee on every transaction. So when prices flattened, the revenue flattened with them.Almost everything built since has aimed at severing that connection. Derivatives, stablecoin distribution, custody, staking, lending, prediction markets, and an in-house blockchain were all supposed to produce income in phases of the market when nobody wants to trade.The second quarter of this year really put all that effort to the test. Industry-wide spot volume fell 25% quarter over quarter, crypto prices dropped 11%, and volatility compressed to multi-year lows. Bitcoin lost roughly 14% across April, May, and June, while Ethereum went down about 25%.Coinbase held up b...