Coinbase Crashes Wall Street’s Old Boys’ Club—Here’s Why Fat Cats & Cryptophiles Alike Should Care 🐱💸

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  • Coinbase, darlings, is about to elbow its way into the S&P 500—making it the first crypto company to do so.
  • Institutional investors now face the jolly prospect of pretending to understand crypto.

One can only imagine the expressions at venerable Manhattan luncheon clubs as Coinbase enters the S&P 500 on the 19th of May—a date the blockchain barons will doubtless commemorate with a thousand NFTs of champagne flutes. As Discover Financial Services packs its bags following the Capital One takeover, the exchange slides into its place, formal top hat slightly askew, an emissary from the digital frontier amid the staid ranks of traditional finance.

What fresh pandemonium does Coinbase’s S&P 500 debut portend?

To the horror—or delight—of index-huggers everywhere, Coinbase’s inclusion means funds must feign enthusiasm and buy COIN shares. Its initial ranking: somewhere beneath the utility companies and above a family-run biscuit factory in Delaware.

The symbolism, however, is weightier. Wall Street, erstwhile crypto skeptic, now finds itself holding hands with the blockchain set in what can only be described as an awkward waltz across global markets.

The news sent Coinbase stock wobbling upwards like an eager puppy, surging 8% in after-hours trading. Google Finance records a total 4% advance by the end of the regular session, with the market cap puffing itself up to $52.8 billion—proof that Wall Street, when confronted by avant-garde ledger technology, responds exactly as it would to an overhyped biotech: by throwing money at it.

Coinbase’s CFO, Alesia Haas, having presumably practiced her lines in the mirror, declared the event a “major milestone.” One pictures a roomful of bespectacled analysts nodding for the cameras, then frantically Googling “what is a blockchain?”

“Joining this prestigious index reflects how far Coinbase and the industry have come and is a signal of where the world is heading.”

Coinbase’s market ballet

As the bankers sipped their celebratory Amontillado, Coinbase shares were changing hands at $226—still some way off the December froth of $343, but respectably decadent compared to its April 2021 coming-out party. The ticker, COIN, remains the only pure-bred crypto beast in the Wall Street menagerie.

Once an $85 billion colossus, Coinbase’s market cap has settled to a genteel $53 billion. Oppenheimer’s Owen Lau, never one to let exuberance be dampened by mere numbers, repeated his $388 price target recently—presumably reasoning that if you say it often enough, someone will listen.

Coinbase’s imminent S&P 500 ascension cements its preeminence in the U.S. spot and derivatives arenas—a status enhanced by its $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit, which no one outside of cryptoland can pronounce, let alone explain.

Other financial influencers—PayPal, Visa, Block—dabble in crypto with the cautious enthusiasm of vicars at a casino. Only Coinbase dared meet the S&P 500’s joyless demands in full.

The strategic plot thickens

Meanwhile, MicroStrategy must content itself with baffled headlines and Bitcoin memes, having failed the profitability sniff test (again). Yet intrigue abounds: Coinbase Asset Management’s Sebastian Bea hints at fresh accounting perfidy—specifically, a change in how the United States values those gold reserves everyone forgot about after 1971.

If enacted, such a shift could conjure up nearly $100 billion of so-called “budget-neutral capital”—a phrase to warm the heart of any self-respecting bureaucrat. While tangential to the S&P hullabaloo, it nonetheless underlines Coinbase’s ascent from eccentric upstart to participant in the highest—and most mysterious—levels of fiscal theatre.

Do stay tuned: if traditional finance thought it had seen everything, it clearly wasn’t paying attention. 😏📈

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2025-05-14 02:45