Not good news for Coinbase (COIN) stocks.

2024 hasn’t started particularly well for Coinbase (COIN) stocks on the stock market, considering the latest news. 

2023 had been a really positive year, but yesterday’s drop in the price of Bitcoin also negatively affected the price of COIN shares. 

It should be noted that Coinbase shares are traded on Nasdaq, and that this exchange is only open on weekdays for only six and a half hours a day. 

Latest news: Coinbase (COIN) stocks in 2024

The Coinbase shares closed 2023 at around $174. 

The reopening of Nasdaq took place on Tuesday, January 2nd, with the stock price of COIN already declining to around $157.

However, yesterday the descent was more pronounced, with a drop down to $144 at the opening, partially recovered afterwards. The closing was at $152. 

The opening drop yesterday was due to the fact that the false news regarding the postponement of the SEC’s decision on Bitcoin spot ETFs had spread a few hours earlier, and within a few hours it turned out to be indeed false.

Excluding the drop to $144 due to fake news, the cumulative loss in just two days of trading in this 2024 has been 12.5%. 

A loss of this magnitude on a stock in such a short time would theoretically be considered abnormal, or even worrisome, but since the volatility of the COIN stock follows that of the crypto markets, it is actually not abnormal at all. 

Coinbase’s 2023 on the stock market

Furthermore, it must be said that 2023 has been a decidedly positive year for Coinbase stock. 

Just think that in 2022 it closed at $35, while last year the closing was at $174. In other words, in just one year the price of COIN shares has risen by almost 400%, much more for example than the +175% of Bitcoin.

The fact that Coinbase stocks performed much better than BTC in 2023 is due to the incredible drop in 2022. 

Coinbase made its debut on the stock market in April 2021, during the crypto markets bubble. The debut price was absurd ($380), so much so that the year ended at $252 instead. 

So during 2022 it actually lost 86%, compared to Bitcoin’s -64%. 

If we take the prices at the end of 2021 as a reference, compared to then BTC is currently at -8%, while COIN is still at -39%. 

Therefore, Bitcoin has recovered almost all the losses of 2022 during 2023, while the Coinbase stock is still far from recovering them all. In other words, COIN had lost a lot during 2022, so a rebound of +400% in 2023 is completely possible. 

In light of all this, it is possible to say that this start of 2024 for Coinbase in the stock market is not particularly positive. 

Ark Invest sales

In addition, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest ETFs have sold Coinbase shares for a total of 25 million dollars.

In reality, they have been selling them for a month now, as on December 5th they held a total of 7.1 million COIN shares, while now they only hold 5.8 million.

However, it should be noted that Coinbase is still the main asset of Ark’s ETFs in terms of market value. For example, in the ARKF FinTech Innovation ETF alone, the COIN stock accounts for almost 14% of the entire NAV. 

It is likely that Cathie Wood’s decision to sell is part of a profit-taking strategy after last year’s increases. 

In fact, a significant portion of those shares were purchased starting from November 2022, when the price had dropped below $60. Now that it is above $150, selling means earning up to 150%.

It is not a coincidence that the total number of shares currently owned by Ark Invest’s ETFs is similar to that of November 2022, before the last major buying campaign started. In other words, they are monetizing the purchases made at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. 

The success of Coinbase and COIN stocks thanks to recent news

One very positive thing for the famous American crypto exchange is that some of the most important crypto ETF managers have chosen it as a custodian for the immobilized BTC as collateral. 

In particular, Coinbase will be the custodian of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, which will be listed on Nasdaq as soon as it is approved. 

It is possible that this choice has also affected the price of COIN shares on the stock market in recent months, as it was announced in June and since then the stock has gained over 200%. 

Nowadays, Coinbase is more than just an exchange, it is a large publicly traded company that offers various institutional-level crypto services, and this is probably the driving reason behind its success on the stock market in 2023. 

In fact, as an exchange, it is still the main one in the USA, after the disappearance of FTX, but far behind foreign competition in terms of volumes, for example. In the last 24 hours, while Binance and Upbit had trading volumes of 26 billion dollars and almost 8 billion dollars respectively, Coinbase stopped at 4.5 billion dollars, which is less than Bybit and OKX. 

If as an exchange it is no longer among the market dominators, it could instead already be or become one as a provider of institutional-level crypto services.