Securities and commodity exchanges

A crypto platform looks like an exchange with a fatter margin, and the largest listed operator shows both halves of that. Coinbase took $7,181.3M of revenue in 2025 [A], but its fee lines move with coin prices: in Q3 2026 transaction revenue fell 44% to $590.2M as consumer spot volume fell 59%, and staking rewards fell 54% to $85.7M [A]. The steadier line is interest on customers' stablecoin balances ($306.9M in the quarter), and that goes to whoever already holds the balances. The cut is what has to be paid for before the first trade. In Canada a platform must register as an investment dealer and join CIRO (the CSA has ended the interim restricted-dealer route). In the EU it needs MiCA authorisation, and in the US money-transmitter licences plus New York's BitLicense. On top of that, it has to keep customers' coins safe from state-backed thieves. On 29 October 2026 about $6.36B left Binance's wallets, most of it in about 20 minutes [B]. The FBI blamed North Korea, and Binance said it would absorb the loss from company funds, its SAFU reserve and its futures insurance fund. Only a balance sheet that size survives a loss like that. Smaller victims did not get through intact: Mt. Gox's trustee is still repaying creditors, with the deadline now 31 October 2027 [A]; Coincheck was sold to Monex; and WazirX reopened only after a Singapore restructuring. Coinbase's own 10-K says customer assets 'are substantially more than our corporate assets and available insurance' [A]. So the sunk cost is regulatory capital plus a balance sheet able to absorb a tail loss, and licensed platforms change hands cheaply by comparison: Robinhood paid about $224M for Bitstamp and $178M for WonderFi [A]. An entrant can buy a licence for less than it costs to build one, but it still carries the tail risk. Conventional exchanges are covered in 5232-securities-exchange-operation.

An exchange looks like the purest toll road in finance, and TMX Group's 2025 shows why people want one: revenue of $1,717.2M, up 18%, with income from operations of $771.0M [A] — a 45% operating margin on a business that holds no inventory and takes no market risk. Recognition by a securities commission is a real hurdle, but it has been cleared in Canada more than once, so it is not the cut. The cut is that the incumbent is not vulnerable where the money is. Of TMX's revenue, equities and fixed-income trading and clearing — the only part a new marketplace actually contests — was $283.4M, about 17% [A]. The rest is capital formation ($297.4M), derivatives trading and clearing ($434.5M) and data, indices and analytics ($701.8M) [A]: lines that belong to whoever already has the issuers, the clearing house and the tape. A challenger venue can win matching share by cutting fees to near zero, and in doing so earns near zero, while order flow returns to the deepest book whenever spreads matter. Liquidity is the product, and only incumbency manufactures it. The 65 Canadian establishments are mostly one-to-four-person entities — holding shells, commodity and niche venues, representative offices — around a single 500-plus employer. The software sold to this industry is screened separately at 5231 and 5239.