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Coinbase faced a challenging Q1 2026 earnings report after the market close on Thursday. Despite a 4% drop in COIN shares during after-hours trading, some positive developments emerged. Institutional transaction revenue rose by 31% year-over-year to $185 million, driven largely by record Deribit derivative volumes. Notably, Coinbase’s prediction markets are now its fastest-growing product, achieving $100 million in annualized revenue within two months and surpassing $200 million with retail derivatives.
Coinbase also reported a new peak in crypto trading volume market share, indicating growth despite overall market declines. CEO Brian Armstrong noted during the earnings call that “the short-term macro environment was challenging, but the underlying business has never been stronger.” The focus for Q2 will be on whether structural products like derivatives and prediction markets can compensate for spot trading’s fee compression.
Meanwhile, Tom Lee revealed Thursday that BitMEX might slow down its Ethereum purchases as it nears its 5% total ETH supply target set at the launch of its treasury strategy. Currently holding around 5.18 million ETH—equivalent to $11.8 billion and representing 4.29% of Ethereum’s supply—the firm stakes 84% through MAVAN, generating about $297 million in staking revenue annually. With Lee’s institutional buying waning, retail investors may need to step up.
AWS has introduced a groundbreaking system developed with Coinbase and Stripe, allowing AI agents to autonomously execute stablecoin payments for APIs, data feeds, web content, and MCP servers without human oversight per transaction—marking the first integration of crypto payment rails into enterprise AI by a major cloud provider. Brian Foster from Coinbase highlighted that AWS developers now have the ability to grant financial autonomy to their agents with this comprehensive managed solution.
In healthcare technology, Tether has launched QVAC MedPsy, an innovative medical AI model that operates independently on smartphones without needing internet or external servers. Designed for psychiatric and medical assessments, it aids in evaluating symptoms and supporting clinical decisions even in low-bandwidth environments like rural clinics. Impressively, MedPsy surpasses larger models by 16 times in benchmarks due to its efficiency-focused design.
Tether’s venture beyond crypto continues to yield benefits across sectors.