Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase Global, brushed off a viral moment from the company’s latest earnings call, writing on X that the episode “was fun” and “happened spontaneously when someone on our team dropped a [prediction markets] link in the chat.”
The comment came a day after Armstrong ended Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings call by deliberately mentioning several crypto buzzwords, instantly deciding the outcome of multiple prediction markets that had been tracking whether he would say them.
lol this was fun – happened spontaneously when someone on our team dropped a link in the chat https://t.co/tQiV3B9jUj
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) October 31, 2025
A sentence that moved the outcome
During the call, after discussing the exchange’s financial results, Armstrong said:
“I was a little distracted because I was tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call. And I just want to add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking and Web3 — make sure we get those in before the end of the call.”
That single line settled bets on two platforms — Kalshi and Polymarket — where traders had wagered on whether those terms would be used.
$80,933 in total volume was traded on Kalshi, while roughly $4,000 was traded on Polymarket. The outcome instantly paid those who had bet “yes” and wiped out the opposing side. One Polymarket user described the result as “Absolute cinema moment.”
Strong results overshadowed by a joke
The quip came at the end of an otherwise solid quarter for Coinbase.
- Net revenue: $1.9 billion, up 83 percent year over year.
- Net income: $432.6 million.
- Bitcoin holdings: 14,458 BTC, an increase of 2,772 from the prior quarter.
The company’s financials, however, were quickly eclipsed online by Armstrong’s closing words — a moment that briefly turned an investor call into an interactive event for crypto traders.
Both Kalshi and Polymarket promptly resolved the relevant contracts following the call. There has been no indication that either platform viewed the incident as a violation of its rules.
Armstrong’s follow-up post on X confirmed that the decision to speak the words was unscripted, coming only after someone on the team noticed the live wagers.
For most traders, the exchange chief’s remark became a quirky footnote — one that showed how even a few seconds on a corporate call can ripple across the growing world of real-money prediction markets.
