Finance History|Nasdaq MarketSite — Two Hundred Fifty on the Tape, Three Hundred Eighty-One on the Open

People treat Coinbase as a San Francisco crypto house that always printed COIN against a sold book.

The 2021 issuer sold nothing. It listed Class A shares that existing holders could offer.

The SEC declared the Form S-1 effective on 1 April 2021. Trading was set for 14 April 2021 on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under COIN.

Nasdaq posted a reference price of 250 dollars a share the night before.

A company notice dated 13 April 2021 put Class A outstanding at 130.7 million shares and Class B at 68.5 million, with a fully diluted count of 261.3 million including options and restricted units.

The prospectus registered up to 114,850,769 Class A shares as eligible for sale. Class B converted one-for-one into Class A and carried the vote.

Reuters recorded the first print at 381 dollars, 52.4 percent above the reference and about 10.9 percent above the 343.58-dollar volume-weighted private price in the first quarter of 2021.

The same dispatch put the regular-session close at 328.28 dollars. That close implied about 65.39 billion dollars of equity value on shares outstanding, and about 85.78 billion dollars fully diluted, in 2021 currency.

Intraday the tape printed as high as 429.54 dollars.

The mechanism is a direct listing. No primary shares, no syndicate book, no proceeds to the issuer. The open was a crossing of stock that already existed.

Holders who wanted the exchange itself bought COIN. Holders who wanted bitcoin bought bitcoin.

The pin is the public facade of Nasdaq MarketSite at 4 Times Square, the later face of the electronic market that took the 2021 order. Interior studios are not a visitor floor.

Photo: Luca Marfe, June 2015, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Nasdaq MarketSite.