Coinbase makes stock market debut, maintains many positives

Crypto exchange giant Coinbase debut on the Nasdaq – a stock market index – on Wednesday, making it the first major crypto business to go public in the U.S.

Coinbase is an app that lets you buy and sell all sorts of cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and about 50 others. You can also use Coinbase to convert one cryptocurrency to another or to send and receive cryptocurrency to and from other people.

Coinbase is trading under a sticker $COIN and it began trading at $381 per share. The stock pushed as high as $429.54 before closing at $328.28. At the closing price, Coinbase was valued at $85.8 billion

The shares have climbed to 12% in premarket trading on Thursday.

Coinbase is the world’s most valuable crypto exchange, with a market valuation of about $90 billion.

The crypto exchange currently has about 56 million verified retail customers, capitalizing on the demand for an easy-to-use crypto storage solution for institutional and retail clients.

Experts say coinbase’s listing will draw the rapidly expanding crypto ecosystem to the US and perhaps around the world.

“The listing of Coinbase… sends a signal that the crypto world is gaining recognition in the mainstream global financial industry,” Shentu Qingchun, CEO of Shenzhen-based blockchain company BankLedger, told the Global Times on Wednesday. “It will be the first major cryptocurrency company to go public.”

It has gained more than 13 million new customers in the first quarter of 2021.

It posted revenues of $1.8 billion (€1.5 billion) in that time, nine times more than the same period last year. It has been boosted by the ongoing Bitcoin boom, the price of which has doubled to more than $60,000 since January.

Coinbase was founded in 2012 in San Francisco by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam and has grown to one of the most well-known cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.

“With bitcoin already having more than doubled in the last six months and cryptocurrencies becoming more popular with more mainstream investors, it can certainly be argued that crypto has become more mainstream in the last 12 months,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.