How much money does a cryptocurrency exchange make?

That’s a good question, isn’t it? Sure, because everyone likes to count other people’s money. Let’s not take the dark horses popular among miners like gate.io, but look directly at one of the most popular exchanges of today, Binance, which also has the largest trading volumes among competitors.

In 2021 and 2022, the Binance exchange will make an estimated $4-5 billion per quarter, which is up to $20 billion a year. It is important to note that we are talking about revenue, not profit, which requires taxes, operations and other items to be paid.

The profit of Binance is not known. In addition, the company was previously officially registered in the Cayman Islands and Malta, and its founder Changpen Zhao is clearly doing his best to “twist-turn-confuse-want”. In 2021, for example, Binance’s profits were estimated at $900 million.

But back to revenue. Bloomberg analysts estimate that for 2021, the exchange earned more than $20 billion from cryptocurrency trading interest alone. And trading is not the cryptocurrency exchange’s only income. Major exchanges charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for listing new coins, i.e. launching trades in them. Providing liquidity, margin trading, initial offerings, NFT and other “whistle-blowing” allow exchanges to make even more money.


By the way, did you know that despite being of Chinese descent, Binance founder Changpen Zhao is Canadian? His family moved to Vancouver when Changpen was 12 years old. Zhao ended up a Canadian citizen, where he studied and later worked in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, and other cities.

Zhao is now the richest cryptocurrency industry representative in the world. He is ranked 52nd on the list of the richest people in the world with a fortune of $20.5 billion.


Binance has an annual income of $20 billion. What about the rest of the exchanges? Coinbase has $7.8 billion in 2021, Huobi has $1.25 billion in 2021, Kraken has $1.38 billion in 2021, and Crypto.com has $1.2 billion.

In 2022, revenues for many exchanges predictably dipped due to the onset of a bear market. Coinbase, for example, gained just over $3 billion, while Huobi has already gained $0.25 billion. But OKX, registered in the Seychelles and Malta, grew strongly in 2022 and passed the $1 billion revenue mark. Crypto.com has almost tripled in size and has generated $3.1 billion in 2022.

Bottom line: major cryptocurrency exchanges can earn more than a billion in a year of operation. In contrast, the figure for cryptocurrency giant Binance is $20 billion a year.

Cryptocurrency advertising in sports. Start of

It’s the year 2021. Bitcoin crosses the $40,000, $50,000 and then $60,000 mark for the first time, leading to mass hysteria around the cryptocurrency niche. In general, before that, cryptocurrency firms had not taken much of a risk in trying to display their logo on the most popular platforms and events like the Super Bowl. However, the super profits have given them that opportunity, so a huge amount of money has flowed into advertising.

Cryptocurrency exchange bankrupt FTX

Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange is bankrupt today, but at the height of its popularity, a lot of money was invested in its PR. In retrospect, you could say that such a thing was needed to attract user deposits, which the management of FTX and related trading company Alameda Research spent on their own needs like real estate and donations to politicians, but still.

So FTX ran ads with the stars of the NFL, i.e. American football, and the NBA, basketball. Tom Brady, Aaron Jones, Stephen Curry and even basketball veteran Shaquille O’Neal all became the faces of the infamous cryptocurrency platform. At the time, FTX was still more than a year away from collapse, with Sam Bankman-Fried spending money left and right.


As it would later turn out, a backdoor, or secret vulnerability, had been created in the FTX cryptocurrency exchange's network. It allowed crypto-assets of the platform's clients to be stealthily transferred to the already mentioned Alameda accounts. This money then flowed into the pockets of both FTX management and Alameda's top traders.

As the case materials show, the top levels of the named companies could easily borrow several million dollars and spend it on their own needs. For example, Alameda, among others, used FTX clients' money as collateral for its trading positions. In addition her margin trades were not liquidated on FTX at all, but that's another story.


March 2021. FTX buys the name of the Miami Heat basketball stadium for $135 million. The deal was approved by the NBA in April, so as early as June 2021, the venue became proudly known as FTX Arena. It looked like this.

Binance cryptocurrency exchange

While FTX was conquering America, Binance started to promote in Europe. Its first high-profile deal in 2021 was to support football club Lazio from the Italian capital.

It received 10 million euros from Binance for the year, that is more than 11 million dollars at the time of the contract.

Binance has also put its logo on the uniforms of FC Porto, and launched a so called $PORTO fan token to celebrate the event.


Overall, Binance has been very careful in its choice of platforms for advertising. As the exchange's chief executive Changpen Zhao then pointed out, this approach allowed the company to continue to grow in a bear market and continue hiring while other crypto-giants were actively downsizing. According to him, "It wasn't easy to give up Super Bowl advertising, stadium naming rights and major sponsor collaborations a few months ago, but we did it."

Notably, in early March, representatives of the exchange announced that they had increased their staff by 600 people since the first of January 2023. On top of that, there are plans to hire another 500 employees by the end of the first half of the year.

And that's really cool considering Polygon Labs laid off 20 percent of its staff in February and Chainalysis removed 5 percent of its staff. Also in January 2023, cryptocurrency investment firm Matrixport laid off 300 people, London-based cryptocurrency exchange Luno got rid of 350 employees, ConsenSys laid off 97 people, and Crypto-com became 20 percent smaller. And these are by no means all of the layoffs since the beginning of the year.


Crypto.com

The success of FTX in renaming sports complexes has kept Crypto.com platform representatives busy, so they took a swing at the legendary Staples Center arena in Los Angeles. The $700 million contract was signed for twenty years and the centre was renamed Crypto.com Arena.

The venue itself hosts many music concerts and fights of various kinds. However, the main one, of course, is the performances of the NBA basketball teams – Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers.

In total for 2021, Crypto.com spent almost half of its revenue on sports advertising. And that seems like an incredible waste.

Here’s a list of advertisements from Crypto.com.

• Italian Serie A football
• NHL Montreal Canadiens.
• PSG football club contract for $30 million a year
• Formula One contract for $100 million
• UFC MMA contract for $175 million
• Support of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team with the equivalent of $10 million a year

Unlike many other exchanges, Crypto.com’s current partners are listed directly on their website, meaning this information is publicly available.

Advertising blossoms for cryptocurrency companies

Football advertising

The world’s premier sport has quite predictably caught the attention of cryptocurrency companies. It’s estimated that 3.5 billion people – or half the planet – watch football. It’s hard to find a better place to advertise.

Binance has outplayed everyone here, as usual. In addition to the already mentioned support for Lazio clubs, Binance has started rolling ads at football matches.

But that’s not all, as Binance has decided to reach out to all continents. The company has thus funded the legendary Santos in Brazil. In addition to FC Santos, Binance has sponsored the entire Brazilian championship – and both the men’s and women’s championships.

Binance sponsored the African Nations Cup in Cameroon.

Changpen Zhao has also managed to sponsor two of the best players in the world. In particular, Binance has sponsored Argentinian football federation, for which Messi plays. The $40 million contract is for five years, and it was the first crypto sponsor for the national football team.


And how precise was Chanpen's guess this time too, wasn't it? Just a year after the partnership began, Argentina won the FIFA World Cup.


Cristiano Ronaldo could not afford to fall behind Messi in any matter. He signed a personal contract with Binance in 2022.

But Binance isn’t the only one alive with footballers. Crypto.com hasn’t been petty. First, they sponsored the entire Italian football championship called Serie A. Then UEFA was looking for a replacement for Gazprom, which had its contract terminated, and Crypto.com came along just in time. The latter’s management sponsored the World Cup in Qatar and the deal was valued at 100 million dollars.

Advertising in Italian football

Let’s take a closer look at the Italian football championship. As we have already said, the entire league is sponsored by Crypto.com and Binance sponsors Lazio. The other clubs have also decided to keep up and have raised more than $250 million in support in total.

Here’s the corresponding list:

• Juventus – Bitget for $7 million a year.
• Milan – BitMex for 5 million a year.
• Napoli – Floki Inu for $1 million a year, changed to UPBit from 2023, amount not yet disclosed.
• Udinese – Kiba Inu.
• Roma – DigitalBits $42 million for three years.
• Inter – Socios.com 16 million a year and then DigitalBits for $30 million a year. Incidentally, a scandal has already broken out here. In March 2023, Inter announced that they were tearing up their contract due to the fact that not a penny had been transferred from DigitalBits for that season.

Advertising in UK football

Journalists at The Athletic claim that every one of the 20 clubs in the English Premier League has or had a cryptosponsor. Many clubs – including Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Everton, Leeds – have issued their fan tokens on the Socios.com platform, of which Messi is the face. Unfortunately, the price of the tokens quickly went down given the events on the market, so fans were disappointed with what was happening and in addition called the clubs to account.

Liverpool have also issued NFTs called LFC Heroes, which are available on the OpenSea exchange. Unfortunately, the same fate has befallen them, as from a starting price of $75, the tokens have already dropped tenfold to less than $7.5.

Below we have listed the biggest cryptocurrencies in English football.

• Manchester City – OKX for $20 million a year.
• Chelsea – WhaleFin for $24 million a year. Incidentally, Atlético de Madrid from Spain spent less – 9 million dollars for a year of advertising.
• Manchester United – Tezos for 27 million dollars.

More modest clubs got more modest sponsors:

• Brentford to Coinjar of Australia.
• Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers – AstroPay.
• Norwich City – Scallop.
• Tottenham Hotspur – Libertex.
• Watford and Everton – Stake.com.
• West Ham United – PeakDeFi.

Advertising in NBA basketball

According to IEG, the world’s strongest basketball league received $1.6 billion from sponsors during the 2021/2022 season, including cryptocurrencies. For example, Coinbase, one of the most popular American exchanges, signed a contract with the NBA for $192 million in sponsorships over five years.

Crypto.com will spend a total of almost a billion dollars on the Los Angeles arena! To be more precise, we’re talking about $700 million over 20 years.

Golden State Warriors received $10 million from the recently defunct FTX exchange. This can be considered a good deal, because the team won’t have to deal with FTX anymore.

The 76ers receive at least $10 million a year from Crypto.com for having their name emblazoned on team uniforms and the home arena floor.

The Brooklyn Nets receive $30 million a year from Webull. It should be noted that in this case, the platform trades not only cryptocurrency, but also traditional financial instruments – such as stocks.

And Socios is not without its help here. 24 of the league’s 30 teams have signed an agreement with Socios to issue tokens. In addition, mentions of Socios are regularly seen on billboards for NBA games.

American football

The advertising market in the NFL is considered to be the largest sports advertising market in America. The volume of sponsorship investment reaches up to $2 billion a year.

The official advertising marketplace of the league has, of course, been FTX America from the beginning. Last season’s Super Bowl game in February 2022 was even dubbed the “Cryptobowl” because of the huge amount of crypto advertising everywhere. FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro, for example, all splurged on solid commercials.

Here are the FTX crypto-exchange ads featuring legendary NFL player Tom Brady.

The 30 seconds on the Super Bowl cost an estimated $7 million. The total amount of crypto advertising shown at that event alone in 2022 was $40 million.

This year, the situation in the crypto markets has done its job. Not a single crypto ad at the Super Bowl 2023.

Here’s another interesting statistic. Imagine in 2022, after watching the Super Bowl, you invested $10,000 each in companies that advertised at the Super Bowl? A year later you would have that much money:

• FTX – $0
• Carvana – $920
• Vroom – $1,750
• Coinbase – $3,620
• DraftKings – $7,450
• Rocket Mortgage – $7,840
• Salesforce – $8,190
• GM – $8460
• Meta – $8,700

Advertising in Formula 1

Royal racing attracts fans all over the world. Formula 1 did not disdain to advertise everything: and even cigarettes after a total ban on such actions. In particular, the Marlboro logo has been replaced by a bar code resembling the Marlboro logo.

Of course, cryptocurrencies quickly arrived in the world of F1, and by 2022 almost all teams had their own crypto sponsor. Check out the beautiful infographic from Motorsport.com

Financial data in Formula 1 is often highly classified, but here’s what we were able to find:


Ferrari used to get $30 million a year from Velas, but the contract has now been terminated.

Mercedes received $12.5 million a year from FTX, but the exchange no longer exists.

Red Bull Racing received and continue to receive $50 million a year from ByBit.


Apart from individual teams, the entire F1 project had its own crypto sponsor. Crypto.com signed a contract with F1 for over $100 million over five years.

Using the NFL as an example, we can see that the difficulties of cryptocurrencies in 2023 are hitting the sponsorship budget hard. Let’s take a look at what happened to cryptosponsors in Formula 1 in 2023. After all, the season has just started and teams have unveiled their cars – traditionally bright and beautiful.

Cryptocurrency advertising in Formula 1 in 2023

It has been speculated that cryptocurrency companies will wind down their sponsorship programmes in Formula 1 due to the ongoing bear market. In addition, Mercedes has been second-guessing wiping references to FTX from its cars since the collapse of that exchange in November 2022.

There is, however, the possibility that it’s only just beginning. Alfa Romeo has signed a $100 million contract with Stake.com that runs for three years.

Many teams have also left crypto logos on their cars.

Crypto.com, for example, is still emblazoned on the Aston Martin.

McLaren not only has some big OKX logos, but also a small Tezos.

The small Binance logo is noticeable at Alpine.

And as you can see, the ByBit logo hasn’t gone anywhere with the Red Bull car, as their partnership has been in place for three years.

In total, cryptocurrency companies have invested around 200 million in Formula 1 advertising in 2023.

Bonus: Cybersport

The first thing that comes to mind here is the situation of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which signed a ten-year, $210 million contract with the legendary team TSM. The latter was even renamed TSM FTX as part of the contract.

What did the players do at the match immediately after FTX went bankrupt? That’s right, they taped up the mention of the trading platform. It looked like this.

Here’s a list of cybersports teams that are sponsored by cryptocurrency companies.

• Natus Vincere – Socios
• Gambit Esports – Exmo
• Virtus.pro – ByBit
• Fnatic – Crypto.com
• Gen.G – Bithumb

Conclusion. How much are cryptocurrency companies burning on advertising?

As you can understand from the material, cryptocurrency businesses spend an incredible amount of money for the sake of their own presence in the sports industry, which amounts to billions of dollars. At times, this expenditure line item accounts for as much as 50 percent of exchanges’ revenues, which gives an idea of the importance of this area and the priorities of large companies.

It can be assumed that it was worth it, because the presence of digital assets was and still is felt at almost every global event. Which means the task of popularising cryptocurrencies across the board has been accomplished. All that’s left to do is to wait for them to become useful for everyone with normal needs – well, the bullrun at the same time.

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