Coinbase is the largest US-regulated centralized exchange, and this assessment is the first CEX-specific spotlight in the Agio Ratings Credit Risk Assessment series. We rank Coinbase #1 of 47 rated exchanges. This piece covers its one-year probability of default, the risk drivers feeding that figure, its on-chain balance and flow data, and its regulatory profile across the US and EU.
Key Findings at a Glance
Probability of Default (1Y): 1.18%, +0.01% week-over-week
TradFi Equivalent: approximately BB- (S&P issuer rating)
Rank: #1 of 47 rated CEXs
Severity: Baseline
What Are Agio Ratings CEX Assessments
Agio Ratings produces quantitative credit ratings for centralized crypto exchanges, estimating each exchange's probability of default over a one-year horizon. Our model combines on-chain data, operational metrics, and regulatory signals into a single score, applying the same statistical framework used in traditional credit risk assessment to the digital asset market.
Our ratings map directly to language that institutional risk desks already use. A probability of default of 1.18% sits close to where S&P prices a BB- issuer, so a credit officer can slot an exchange into an existing rating scale without translating between crypto-native and TradFi conventions. Each rating updates daily as on-chain balances move and flows shift, giving counterparties a live read rather than a quarterly attestation. We cover 47 exchanges, ranking each against the others and against the industry baseline.
Exchange Overview
Coinbase launched in 2012 and operates from San Francisco. It listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker COIN in April 2021, making it the only major US crypto exchange that files audited financials as a public company. S&P assigns Coinbase a BB- issuer credit rating, which places it in speculative-grade territory but well above most of its venue peers.
The exchange runs the largest US-regulated trading operation by volume and registered users. Its business spans spot trading for retail and institutional clients, derivatives through Coinbase Derivatives, and custody through Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Custody Trust. Staking adds a recurring revenue line across major proof-of-stake assets. Coinbase also operates Base, an Ethereum layer-2 network that settles transactions at lower cost and feeds activity back into the broader platform. The mix gives Coinbase revenue sources beyond trading fees, which historically dominate exchange income.
Probability of Default
A probability of default is our model's estimate of how likely an exchange is to fail to meet its obligations over a one-year horizon. Coinbase's PD sits at 1.18% as of June 14, 2026, up 0.01% from the prior week. That reading maps to a BB- equivalent on the S&P scale, the same speculative-grade band the agency assigns to Coinbase as an issuer.
For an institutional counterparty, that number translates into a concrete expectation. A 1.18% PD means our model assigns roughly a one-in-eighty-five chance that Coinbase defaults within twelve months under current conditions. Risk desks use that figure to set exposure limits, price collateral terms, and decide how much balance to keep on the venue overnight.
The week-over-week move is marginal and keeps Coinbase well inside Baseline severity. A point-in-time reserve snapshot answers a narrower question than a PD does, so counterparties relying on attestations alone get a thinner picture than a forward-looking default estimate provides. Agio's argument for why proof of reserves falls short of counterparty risk sets out that gap in detail.
:::pendingedit b98775cd-68c1-4cca-a9ba-8338a52e73dd
Probability of Default
Probability of default measures the likelihood that Coinbase fails to meet its obligations over a one-year horizon. The model reads Coinbase at 1.18% as of June 2026, which sits closely aligned with S&P's BB- issuer rating for the company. The figure rose 0.01% week over week, a move small enough to register as noise rather than a signal.
For a counterparty, that 1.18% is the starting point for any exposure decision. It tells a trading desk how much default risk it absorbs per dollar held on the venue, before applying recovery assumptions or position sizing. A BB- reading places Coinbase in speculative-grade territory, stronger than most of its peers but still a venue that warrants active limits rather than blind trust.
PD also does work that a balance snapshot cannot. Reserve attestations confirm what an exchange holds at a single moment, while PD projects forward and updates daily on shifting flow and liquidity data. For why reserve figures alone fall short of a counterparty risk view, see Agio's analysis of why proof of reserves is not enough.
Historical PD Trend
Across the trailing 12 months, Coinbase's PD held inside a narrow band between 1.09% and 1.22%. The reading peaked at 1.22% during Q3 2025, then fell to a 1.09% trough by the close of Q4 before settling at the current 1.18%.
That stability matters more than the small swings inside it. The industry average PD sat near 6% throughout the period and crept slightly higher, leaving Coinbase roughly 5x below the field for the full year. The gap widened modestly as peers drifted up and Coinbase stayed flat.
Net of the quarterly movement, the 12-month trend shows a modest improvement of -0.04%. A risk officer reading this chart sees a venue that neither deteriorated nor surprised across a full year of monitoring.
Risk Driver Breakdown
Our model scores Coinbase across ten drivers, and the strongest cluster sits where you would expect for a public, regulated exchange. Company Size, which captures balance scale and operational footprint, reads high. Exchange Maturity, a measure of operating history and platform stability, scores equally high, as does the License Score that grades regulatory coverage across jurisdictions. User Traffic, tracking sustained demand on the platform, also lands in the strong band.
The drag comes from two trend factors. On-Chain Balance Trend, which measures the direction of reserve levels over time, scores low, and On-Chain Flow Trend, tracking the trajectory of inflows and outflows, reads only average. Declining trend scores flag movement in reserves and flows that our model treats as a softening in liquidity stability, even when absolute balances stay large.
Cluster weighting shows where the model concentrates its attention. Market Volumes and Flow drives 60.4% of the PD, Balances and Liquidity contributes 34.8%, and User Activity accounts for the remaining 4.8%. The flow cluster carries the most weight, which explains why Coinbase's trend weaknesses register at all despite its dominant size and regulatory standing. :::
Regulatory and Licensing Profile
Coinbase holds the broadest US regulatory footprint of any centralized exchange, which feeds directly into its License Score of 95/100. That score measures how many recognized regulators oversee an exchange and the strength of those mandates. The company operates under a New York BitLicense from NYDFS, the state regime that governs virtual currency activity for New York customers. It registers with FinCEN as a money services business, the federal classification that imposes anti-money-laundering and reporting obligations.
On the securities side, Coinbase Prime runs as an SEC-registered broker-dealer, giving institutional clients a regulated route into custody and execution. Coinbase Derivatives operates CFTC-regulated futures, placing its derivatives products under federal commodities oversight rather than offshore regimes.
Coinbase has also pursued an OCC national trust charter, which would give it a federal banking-style authorization for its custody operations.
In Europe, Coinbase has positioned itself for MiCA, the EU framework that standardizes crypto-asset licensing across member states. A MiCA authorization lets the exchange passport services across the bloc under a single regulatory regime.
Proof of Reserves
Coinbase publishes Proof of Reserves attestations that demonstrate the exchange controls on-chain wallets holding a stated quantity of crypto assets. These attestations confirm that observable balances exist and are signed by addresses Coinbase controls. They give counterparties a verifiable snapshot of assets at a single point in time.
What the attestations do not show is the other side of the ledger. PoR reports do not disclose Coinbase's liabilities to customers, its off-chain obligations, or any leverage held against those reserves. An exchange can prove it holds $81 billion in wallets while owing more than that to depositors, and a PoR attestation would not reveal the gap. Agio's analysis of why proof of reserves is not enough for crypto counterparty risk sets out this limitation in detail.
Probability of default is the more useful forward-looking metric for a risk desk. PoR captures one moment in time and says nothing about how an exchange's position evolves. A 1.18% PD estimates the likelihood that Coinbase fails to meet obligations over the next twelve months, updated daily as on-chain flows, trading volumes, and regulatory signals change.
Peer Context
Coinbase sits at the top of the rated universe with a 1.18% PD, the lowest among the major US and global venues Agio tracks. The table below shows headline one-year PDs for the largest peers.
Each of these venues runs above Coinbase at the headline level, and all sit closer to the ~6% industry average. Coinbase holds the widest margin in the rated set.
Implications for Institutional Counterparties
A 1.18% probability of default reads differently depending on which risk desk receives it. For each institutional user, the number plugs into a decision that already exists in their workflow.
Trading firms use PD to size counterparty limits and rank venues. A BB- equivalent reading places Coinbase in speculative-grade territory by traditional standards, yet it sits at the conservative end of that band and well ahead of most rated exchanges. A risk officer setting venue exposure caps can justify a larger allocation to Coinbase than to a peer carrying a 6% PD.
Custodians weigh the same figure when structuring co-custody arrangements. A lower default probability shortens the list of contractual safeguards a custodian demands before holding assets alongside the exchange.
Insurers pricing exchange default coverage turn PD directly into a premium. Expected loss follows the standard formula, EL = PD x LGD x EAD. With PD at 1.18%, a $100M exposure and an assumed 60% loss given default produces an expected loss near $708,000 per year before recovery assumptions.
That arithmetic is what makes the BB- framing useful. A TradFi credit desk already prices BB- corporate exposure every day, and the 1.18% figure lets that desk treat Coinbase as a known quantity rather than a novel one. The mechanism is the same. Only the asset class is new.
Methodology Note
At Agio Ratings, we build each PD estimate through Bayesian inference, drawing on 17 risk variables that collapse into 5 latent dimensions. Those dimensions capture an exchange's size, trajectory, volatility, operating age, and regulatory strength. The model treats a centralized exchange the way a credit desk treats a corporate issuer.
Our v3.2 recalibration revised the model's average default rate assumption from 15.0% to 10.1%, which lowered Coinbase's reading toward its current 1.18%. The v3.2 model reports an AUC of 0.864 as its discrimination accuracy. Calibration against market signals shows roughly 85% R² versus Coinbase's equity price and 80% versus its bond yield spreads. The full changelog is documented in Agio's v3.2 model explainer.
Track up-to-date risk ratings for Coinbase with Agio Ratings
Need to track up-to-date risk for Coinbase? We measure live risk ratings for exchanges, custodians, and stablecoins, updated daily so institutional counterparties always have a current read.
Our platform covers 47 centralized exchanges with daily PD updates, real-time anomaly alerts, and a portfolio-level Risk Simulator that models contagion and correlation across counterparty exposures. Risk managers get a sortable ratings dashboard with trend columns, pinnable watchlists, and entity-level drill-downs showing live on-chain balances and flows. It is the same data that powers this assessment, refreshed every day. We flagged FTX as high-risk four months before its collapse and correctly assessed Bybit's resilience before its $1.5B hack in February 2025.
Traditional rating agencies do not cover crypto counterparties. We do, with the same Bayesian inference framework a TradFi credit desk would recognize, applied to on-chain data that traditional models cannot reach. Book a demo to see the full platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Coinbase's 1.18% probability of default actually mean?
The figure estimates the chance Coinbase defaults on counterparty obligations within one year. In Agio's ratings, that 1.18% reading makes Coinbase the lowest-risk venue of the 47 exchanges tracked. For a risk desk, it sets a benchmark against which every other exchange's exposure can be sized.
How does this compare to S&P's rating? A 1.18% one-year PD maps closely to S&P's BB- issuer rating for Coinbase. That sits in speculative-grade territory, stronger than most crypto venues but below investment grade. A traditional risk desk would read it as a creditworthy but watchable counterparty.
What drives Coinbase's score?
Company size, exchange maturity, and licensing all score high, reflecting scale, operating history, and regulatory coverage. In Agio's model, the main drag comes from on-chain balance and flow trend scores, which track reserve and transaction momentum over time. Knowing which drivers move the score tells a counterparty where to watch for early signs of stress.
How often does the rating update?
Agio recalculates Coinbase's PD daily using live on-chain data and operational signals. Unlike a quarterly attestation, this gives counterparties a live read that moved just 0.01% week over week to June 14, 2026. The daily cadence lets risk desks adjust exposure as conditions change rather than waiting on periodic disclosures.
How do I access the underlying data? Agio publishes daily PD readings, risk driver scores, and on-chain monitoring through its platform for institutional subscribers. The data covers all 47 rated exchanges, not Coinbase alone. Request access through Agio directly.
