Coinhako revenue falls, losses narrow as money flows into AI

Crypto markets ended 2025 in a slump. That’s despite bitcoin prices hitting an all-time high in October and stablecoins passing legislation in the US and finding wider acceptance among institutions.

This created ripple effects across the industry. Revenue of Coinhako, a cryptocurrency trading platform based in Singapore, fell by 33% year on year to S$24.1 million (US$18.8 million) that year, reversing the 3x growth it had recorded between 2023 and 2024.

Internal and external factors both played a role in this decline. Coinhako’s operational expenses increased as it tightened its governance structure in 2025 in preparation for a majority acquisition by Japanese financial group SBI Holdings, a deal that was announced in February 2026. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has since cleared the move.

Institutional investors also made fewer trades after bitcoin breached the US$126,000 mark in October 2025 and fell thereafter. It did not help that these backers began moving their capital into AI-related stocks by the latter part of the year.

“There’s a huge rotation of capital into semiconductor stocks and AI stocks, and that is the flavor of the year,” says Henryk Abucewicz Tan, Coinhako’s head of institutional investments. “We don’t know how long that is going to last.”

In the US, tech stocks of chip makers, data center operators, and AI model operators were top performers on the S&P 500 Index in 2025, which ended the year on a 17% gain.

However, the firm’s loss before tax decreased by 41% to US$6.1 million last year, as other income – including realized gains on options as well as unrealized gains in its revaluation of digital assets – grew almost 7x.

Institutional investor focus

Despite being known as a retail-focused crypto trading platform, Coinhako has been positioning itself as an investment channel for institutional investors in the last four years. In 2025, the company said it had onboarded over 10,000 institutional investors.

About two-thirds of the firm’s total trading volume and revenue now come from institutional clients, says Tan.

Coinhako currently offers zero fees to institutions for trades worth more than S$200,000 (US$156,000).

Alternative products offered by the firm have been a hit among institutional investors. These include offerings that allow backers to earn certain yields for crypto assets they already own and buy or sell cryptocurrencies at a specified price and date in the future.

Coinhako is headquartered in Singapore but has clients across Asia Pacific. / Photo credit: Coinhako

As of August 2026, these products have processed around US$2.2 billion in trading volume, surpassing the US$2.6 billion they saw for the entire 2025, according to Tan.

Still, catering to institutional investors comes at a cost. Service fees, Coinhako’s second-largest expense after employee benefits expenses, grew more than 6x year on year to US$6.9 million in 2025. These fees accounted for almost half of the company’s total cost of services that year.

Expansion play