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Crypto-linked equities posted their best day in weeks as investors rotated back into risk assets, with Coinbase and Strategy leading the charge despite both companies reporting bruising quarterly results.
Friday’s session brought a rare dose of green to crypto-exposed stocks after weeks of relentless selling pressure. Coinbase (COIN) rallied more than 17% on the day, while Strategy (MSTR) climbed roughly 9%, both tracking a rebound in Bitcoin that saw the token recover above $68,000 after briefly threatening to break below $60,000 earlier in the week.
The gains came as broader U.S. equity markets traded sideways on the back of mixed economic signals. The Dow and S&P 500 were largely flat, but high-beta crypto names outperformed across the board, suggesting traders were re-entering positions that had been heavily sold over the past month.
Coinbase: Bad Numbers, Good Reaction
The Coinbase rally was striking given what investors had just seen in the company’s earnings report. The exchange posted a $667 million net loss for Q4 2025, driven by falling trading volumes as the crypto market contracted. Revenue came in at $1.78 billion, missing analyst expectations of $1.83 billion, while earnings per share landed at $0.66 versus the $0.96 Wall Street had penciled in.
Under normal circumstances, a miss on both the top and bottom line would send a stock lower. Instead, the market reaction suggested that much of the bad news was already priced in. COIN had already shed about 34% year-to-date heading into the report, falling from its January high near $262 as Bitcoin dropped roughly 30% in the preceding month.
One figure that caught investor attention was $3.07 billion in free cash flow for the quarter. That number stood out against the headline loss and pointed to underlying profitability that the net loss obscured. Coinbase is also buying back its own shares, a signal from management that they see the stock as undervalued at current levels.
CEO Brian Armstrong framed the crypto pullback as psychological rather than fundamental during the earnings call, arguing that core adoption metrics remain positive. He pointed to continued growth in stablecoin usage and noted that some Coinbase users have remained net buyers throughout the decline.
Despite Armstrong’s confidence on the call, his personal trading has told a different story. Data compiled by VanEck’s Matthew Sigel showed that Armstrong sold more than 1.5 million COIN shares between April 2025 and January 2026, collecting roughly $550 million in proceeds. The sales were executed through a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan, which executives use to avoid insider trading concerns, but the optics during a 60% stock decline have not gone unnoticed.
Analysts remain split on the outlook. BTIG trimmed its price target to $280 but maintained a Buy rating, noting that revenue diversification was a positive takeaway from the call. Barclays and Clear Street both cut targets as well, while Citizens kept an Outperform rating and called the current environment a “transitory period” rather than a structural downturn.
Coinbase’s longer-term positioning may matter more than this quarter’s numbers. Armstrong outlined a 2026 roadmap centered on what the company calls the “Everything Exchange,” a plan to integrate stocks, prediction markets, and other asset classes into a single global trading platform. It is a bet that the next cycle will reward breadth, not just crypto volume.
Strategy Posts Record Loss, Keeps Buying
Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, had a similarly contradictory day. Shares rose 9% even though the firm had disclosed one of the largest quarterly losses in the history of any publicly traded U.S. company just a week earlier.
The Q4 2025 loss came in at $12.4 billion, or $42.93 per diluted share. That figure was almost entirely driven by mark-to-market accounting on Strategy’s massive Bitcoin holdings. Bitcoin fell from around $120,000 at the start of Q4 to $89,000 by year-end, and the new fair value accounting rules required Strategy to recognize the unrealized decline as a reported loss.
The number looks catastrophic on paper but tells a different story in practice. Strategy did not sell any Bitcoin. It has no major debt maturities until 2028. And it continued to add to its position throughout the downturn.
In the week ending February 8, the company disclosed another purchase of 1,142 BTC for approximately $90 million at an average price of $78,815 per coin. That brought the firm’s total holdings to 714,644 Bitcoin, acquired at an aggregate cost of roughly $54.35 billion. The buying was funded through ongoing stock sales under the company’s at-the-market offering program.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor has remained publicly defiant throughout the decline, repeating that Strategy will not sell Bitcoin during downturns. On the Q4 earnings call, CEO Phong Le outlined plans to keep expanding the treasury, framing the current environment as an accumulation opportunity. Le noted that the company raised $25.3 billion in capital during 2025, making it the largest equity issuer among U.S. public companies for a second consecutive year.
Analyst opinion is divided. TD Cowen backed the strategy, arguing that Strategy is the leading corporate Bitcoin treasury company and stands to gain disproportionately from any market recovery. Bernstein noted that liabilities are structured conservatively, with no forced selling triggers in the near term. Others have been less charitable, pointing to the growing gap between the company’s share price and the net asset value of its Bitcoin holdings.
The Broader Crypto Stock Trade
Coinbase and Strategy were not alone. Circle (CRCL), the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, climbed roughly 7% on the day, while Galaxy Digital (GLXY) rose about 6.5%. Across the sector, the move reflected a broader rotation back into digital asset exposure after weeks of heavy selling.
Bitcoin itself finished the week having bounced roughly 11% from its Thursday low near $60,000 to above $70,000 on Friday, the kind of whipsaw move that has defined this market since the selloff began in late 2025.
The question now is whether this is a genuine turning point or just another dead-cat bounce in a market that remains 45% below its October high of $126,000. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen roughly $6 billion in outflows since November. Long-term holders have reduced positions to multi-year lows. And the Fed, under incoming Chair Kevin Warsh, has given no indication that rate cuts are coming soon.
For now, Friday’s rally gave crypto stock investors a breather. Whether it lasts depends entirely on what Bitcoin does next.