Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global made its stock market debut at just shy of a
whopping $100 billion valuation today, rose well above that, and then
pulled back by the close to end the day worth some $86 billion. At
today's peak, Coinbase had a market value of more than $112 billion.
It compares with a
$66 billion market value for Intercontinental
Exchange, the parent company of the New
York Stock Exchange. Coinbase, which allows
users to trade Bitcoin, Ether, and a few
dozen other cryptocurrencies, had last been valued at around $8 billion in
a private fund-raising round in 2018.
The direct listing was met
with extreme excitement among many retail investors, Avi
Salzman reported today. In a direct listing, a private
company's shares begin trading on an exchange all at once, with the price set
by the intersection of supply and demand from the get-go. The process largely
cuts out the investment banks, as well as the institutional investors and
roadshow of a conventional initial public offering.
Here's Avi earlier today:
Coinbase
designed its public stock listing to let retail investors get in on the ground
floor. Now that ground floor is rising fast, and demand has been enormous for
the shares. Investors at one broker focused on the millennial and Gen-Z crowd
are willing to set remarkably high limit orders to get in.
'We’ve been
taking orders since 7 a.m. this morning. We have hundreds of thousands of
orders waiting to go into the stock,' said Anthony Denier, CEO of broker
Webull, a competitor to Robinhood that attracts younger investors. 'This IPO is
the most talked about stock I have ever seen since GameStop. That is kind of
what it feels like. It has that it has that same sense of: ‘This is our
opportunity.’'
Webull has been preparing
for days and increased its cloud-computing capacity just for this event. A
limit order is a request to buy at any price up to a specific level.
Coinbase didn't raise any
money in its direct listing, because no new shares were sold. Its ticker symbol
is COIN.
Barron's Luisa Beltran spoke with Coinbase’s
president and chief operating officer Emilie
Choi today.
Check out that interview here.
The price of Bitcoin,
meanwhile, touched another record high today, above $64,000.
Ether also traded at all-time highs. It was a big day for all things crypto.
In case you missed the
latest issue of Barron's, we ran a special section on how investors should be
thinking about investing—or not—in Bitcoin and other crypto assets.
Check out those reports
below:
·
Bitcoin Is
Making a Splash. What to Know Before You Test the Crypto Waters.
·
How to
Invest in Bitcoin Without Getting in Over Your Head
·
A Bitcoin
ETF Is Still in the Works. Here Are Your Options in the Meantime.
·
An NFT
Ghost Game Offers a Glimpse of the Future of Finance
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