If the pro-Bitcoin actions of titans Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have been insufficient, the traditional market seems to have given cryptocurrencies its blessing yesterday, with the debut of Coinbase on Nasdaq.
The exchange is estimated to have had one of the most successful public direct listings in history. Data from Nasdaq indicates that COIN began trading near $328 and peaked at $429 per share, exceeding many experts’ expectations.
On a single day, COIN’s value traded hit an all-time record. Outperforming giants like Alibaba and Facebook, like Senior ETF Analyst for Bloomberg Eric Balchunas pointed out. As Balchunas also stated, COIN broke another record when 4 ETF’s “bought the crap out of” the stock on day 1.
$COIN with $29b in volume on Day One, which I'm pretty sure is an all-time record. $BABA was $25b and $FB was $23b. pic.twitter.com/dSl2lQlODy
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) April 14, 2021
Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares, Meltem Demiros, was just one of the many in the crypto space celebrating the debut. Surpassing her time estimations, Coinbase is now worth more than Goldman Sachs, one the largest U.S. banks, with a total market cap of about $90 billion, at the time of writing.
called it
coinbase > Goldman Sachs
i love it so, so much https://t.co/6vooaQfGgW
— Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem) April 14, 2021
Demiros’ sentiment was shared by most of the crypto industry. From early Coinbase investors like Garry Tan, his initial $300,000 investment in 2013 made a 6000x profit, to Paradigm’s Omar Bohsali, legendary rap singer Nasir Jones and others.
Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said Coinbase’s debut has signaled a new level of maturity for the crypto industry.
$COIN "is really signaling to the market as a whole a certain level of maturity, a certain way of doing things the right way," @Grayscale CEO @Sonnenshein says, adding: "Crypto is not an investment that's appropriate for every investor." https://t.co/Jb7k9tf4PH pic.twitter.com/xPLJjTv1JP
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) April 15, 2021
COIN speaking the bank’s language
In addition to this, CoinShares CSO said the new wave of millionaires and billionaires “minted” by Coinbase’s listing are prepared to take their profits to continue the growth of the crypto ecosystem. Demiros said:
There’s really this nice recursive effect where this industry isn’t just about the assets. It’s now really about the companies, which we’ve been investing in for almost a decade now (…).
CoinShares CSO later referred to the exchange “blockbuster” numbers in its Q1, 2021, earnings report, and the pressure to stay at the top of the innovation race. Demiros said:
To get even within the crypto industry, the pass of innovation has just been insane to see and what we are looking at, are (Coinbase’s Q1 revenues) numbers sustainable? Can Coinbase diversify quickly enough? For this week, for this moment, I certainly think there is still a lot of enthusiasm.
Coinbase’s debut will attract further institutional investors to the market. The crypto industry is, said Demiros, speaking the language of the bank’s “Billies” (Billions USD).
At the time of writing, COIN trades at $331 moving sideways in the 24-hour chart, and still susceptible to volatility, due to the hype around the event, which could be causing all across the markets.
Similarly, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $62.495 moving sideways in the past day (0.1%). In the weekly chart, BTC still has an 11.4% profit.
On Coinbase public listing, CEO Brian Armstrong said:
The cryptoeconomy today is nothing like the ecosystem that existed when we launched Coinbase 9 years ago. And it’s nothing like the ecosystem that will exist 9 years from now (…). As the first major crypto company to publicly list, today is a big day for Coinbase and the cryptoeconomy that we’re a part of.