Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sold over 1.56 million shares of COIN stock between April 2025 and January 2026, generating approximately $550 million in proceeds. The data, first surfaced by VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Research Matthew Sigel using Bloomberg pricing records, resurfaced on X this week after Coinbase reported a $394 million Q1 loss and cut 14% of its workforce.
The timing is the story. Armstrong’s average sale price was roughly $350 per share. COIN closed at $170 on Thursday, after the earnings miss. He sold at double the current price. Then the company lost money.
88 trades, zero purchases. The largest was $119 million in a single day.
The sales were executed under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which Armstrong adopted in August 2024. These plans let executives preset sell orders on a schedule, insulating them from insider trading accusations. The mechanism is legal. It is also designed for exactly this kind of scenario: selling at high prices on autopilot while the public narrative is still bullish.
The largest single-day sale: June 25, 2025. Armstrong offloaded 336,265 shares at $355.37 each, netting $119.5 million. His most recent recorded sale: January 5, 2026, when he sold 40,000 shares at about $250. During the entire period, COIN traded between $176 and $398. Armstrong sold across the entire range but concentrated his largest disposals near the top.
88 trades. Zero purchases. That ratio is notable. Armstrong was a net seller of his own company’s stock for nine consecutive months.
He still holds $14 billion. Context matters.
Before anyone calls it a bailout: Armstrong still owns an estimated $14 billion in Coinbase stock. The $550 million in sales represents roughly 5% of his total position. Founders selling small portions of their holdings is normal. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk all run regular 10b5-1 plans. The mechanism exists specifically so insiders can diversify without creating market panic.
But context also matters. During the same period Armstrong was selling, Coinbase was buying. The company added $88 million in Bitcoin to its treasury in Q1 2026. It acquired Deribit for $2.9 billion. It launched prediction markets, expanded derivatives, and built AI agent payment infrastructure with Amazon. The company was deploying capital aggressively. Its CEO was withdrawing capital personally.
The week that made the optics worse
The stock sales happened months ago. The data was public in February. But the conversation reignited this week because of what happened in a five-day stretch. Monday: Armstrong announced 700 layoffs, calling it an “AI-native” restructuring. Wednesday: Coinbase reported a $394 million Q1 loss, missing analyst expectations by a wide margin. Thursday morning: an AWS outage in Virginia took Coinbase offline for over two hours during trading hours.
Crypto Bitlord, a pseudonymous trader with over 500,000 followers on X, posted the sales data alongside the earnings report and wrote: “Meanwhile, the CEO has dumped $550M of COIN stock.” The post went viral. The framing was not subtle. And the numbers do not need framing to look bad.
Meanwhile, Kraken’s parent spent $2.65 billion on acquisitions and applied for a federal bank charter the same day. Revolut is chasing a $200 billion IPO valuation while Morgan Stanley launched crypto trading on E*Trade at 50 basis points, undercutting Coinbase on fees. The competitive pressure is real. Coinbase’s answer so far has been layoffs and an earnings miss. Armstrong’s answer, at least financially, was to sell first and restructure later.
Legal, normal, and still a signal
Nothing about the sales was illegal. 10b5-1 plans are standard. The SEC reviewed and reformed these plans in 2023, adding cooling-off periods and limiting overlapping plans. Armstrong’s plan complied with all of those rules. He adopted it in August 2024, well before the Q1 2026 downturn.
But legal and neutral are not the same thing. When a CEO sells $550 million of stock at an average of $350 and the stock is now at $170, that is a data point. When that same company then reports its worst quarter in two years, cuts 14% of staff, and goes offline during a market selloff, the data point becomes a narrative. Armstrong said on the earnings call that Coinbase’s long-term thesis is stronger than ever. He may be right. But he sold first.
