Crypto Watershed: Coinbase Shares Open at $381 on NASDAQ; Market Cap Exceeds $100 Billion
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Crypto watershed: Coinbase shares open at $381 on NASDAQ:
Coinbase's debut on the Nasdaq is a watershed moment for the rapidly evolving crypto-sphere - an ecosystem that includes digital currencies, and other digital assets such as nonfungible tokens or NFTs. It also includes firms working to decentralise finance and disrupt other industries with distributed ledger technologies like blockchain that eliminates the need for middlemen to verify transactions and ensure provenance.
Coinbase went public via a direct listing that allows existing shareholders to directly sell those shares to the public.
Trading under the ticker symbol COIN, it opened for trading on the Nasdaq at $381 a share and quickly climbed as high as $429.50 - blowing away the Nasdaq's listing reference price of $250 and sending Coinbase's market capitalization above $100bn.
Coinbase's blockbuster debut comes as the world's largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is accelerating its march towards becoming a mainstream form of payment.
[...] Those investments have been on a meteoric winning streak this year. One Bitcoin was worth around $29,000 at the start of January. On Wednesday it smashed through $64,000 - propelled most recently by the heat around the Coinbase listing - before giving back some gains.
[...] But crypto is also famously volatile. Previous run-ups in Bitcoin, for example, have been followed by spectacular busts that have seen values plummet by some 80 percent.
[...] Buying shares of Coinbase is one way for investors to get a slice of crypto action without buying coins or tokens directly.
Additional coverage at CNN and The Washington Post:
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