Coinbase, a website for buying and selling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, went public in the United States on Wednesday, becoming the first major cryptocurrency business to do so. It’s clear that cryptocurrency has made its way into the mainstream of the financial industry, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. On Wednesday evening, Coinbase stock — which trades under the ticker COIN — closed at $328 per share, valuing the newly public business at more than $85 billion. Coinbase’s price remained well above the $250 reference price set by the Nasdaq before trading started during the day, swinging as high as $429 at one stage.
To put it another way, if you’ve been snoozing the bitcoin and blockchain conversation for the past decade, it’s probably time to wake up. According to Erin Griffith of the New York Times, the company’s direct listing on the Nasdaq is a “coming-out party” for cryptocurrencies. Protocol, a tech policy website, dubbed Wednesday the “biggest day yet for the crypto world.” “Not only does it make blockchain and bitcoin a little more acceptable, it now offers investors another way to invest in bitcoin,” said Paul Vigna, a Wall Street Journal cryptocurrency reporter.
Even if the average investor does not want to buy or sell cryptocurrencies on their own, Coinbase’s direct listing allows them to participate in the cryptocurrency economy by investing in one of the industry’s largest players.
If you’re new to the trend, cryptocurrencies are digital currencies created with blockchain technology, which is a form of decentralized ledger that can track transactions through a network of devices. Rather than relying on a single device to keep track of all of these interactions, a record is maintained on each and every node in the network.
CRYPTOCURRENCY AND THE BLOCKCHAIN ARE INCREASINGLY COMMONPLACE
The public listing of Coinbase is just the latest step in cryptocurrency’s transformation from nerdy curiosity to mainstream investment opportunity and payment process. Since 2018, the payment processing company Square has enabled most of its Cash App users to buy and sell bitcoin. And more and more of them have been doing so recently. In February, Square CFO Amrita Ahuja said that 3 million people used the app to make bitcoin transactions last year, with 1 million doing so in January 2021 alone.
Last year, PayPal started allowing users to purchase cryptocurrencies using their accounts. This March, the platform extended its cryptocurrency capabilities by enabling users to convert their cryptocurrency assets into US dollars in order to make transactions, which is only one step away from allowing users to make purchases with actual cryptocurrency. Paypal has also stated that Venmo customers, which it owns, will be able to transact in cryptocurrencies in the near future.
Applications for blockchain technology are emerging in an increasing number of domains. The blockchain is essential to the sale of digital art as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which have grown in popularity in recent weeks. Blockchain is now being used in vaccine passport apps, voting technology, and even supply chain management. At the same time, the use of blockchain technology has posed a number of issues, including the possibility of theft, a lack of oversight, and concerns that the technology’s high computational requirements would have a significant environmental impact.
