Share this article
Coinbase Falls Below $250 Reference Price for First Time Amid Crypto Correction
The drop seems to confirm what some equity analysts had pondered at the time of Coinbase’s listing – that COIN might act as a proxy bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 12:56 p.m. Published May 17, 2021, 4:16 p.m.
Coinbase’s stock tumbled below the cryptocurrency exchange’s direct listing reference price of $250 for the first time early Monday New York time after an Elon Musk tweet caused a sell-off in bitcoin and other cryptos.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
The stock closed at $258 per share on Friday after flirting with the reference price several times that day. It plunged early Monday to a record low of $238. The drop was triggered by the Tesla CEO’s tweet Sunday that implied he either had sold or might sell the electric vehicle maker’s more than $1 billion in bitcoin.
The Coinbase stock recovered some ground after Musk confirmed Tesla had not (yet) sold its bitcoin holdings. The stock was back up to $246 as of press time. This is the first time COIN has fallen below the price that Goldman Sachs and the Nasdaq decided it should trade at before the exchange’s direct listing. On that day, the stock opened well above the reference price at $381 and rose as high as $429.54 before closing at $328.
Since then, the price of COIN has trended downward, dropping 21.3% from its closing price of $328 on April 14 to $258 as of Friday.
COIN's drop seemed to follow that of bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market cap, where the price fell 20.5% during the same period. The dual drop seemed to confirm what some equity analysts had pondered at the time of Coinbase’s listing – that COIN might act as a proxy bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). Given COIN’s drop in response to bitcoin’s plunge, that correlation seems more definite.
COIN is far from the only company stock brought low by Musk’s tweet. MicroStrategy (MSTR), another stock viewed as a proxy for bitcoin due to the billions in dollars worth held on the balance sheet, is down 6.7% to $486. Meanwhile, shares of bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain (RIOT) is down 11% to $23.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Japan’s Higher Rates Puts Bitcoin in the Crosshairs of a Yen Carry Unwind
A stronger yen typically coincides with de-risking across macro portfolios, and that dynamic could tighten liquidity conditions that recently helped bitcoin rebound from November’s lows.
What to know:
- The Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates to 0.75% at its December meeting, the highest since 1995, affecting global markets including cryptocurrencies.
- A stronger yen could lead to de-risking in macro portfolios, impacting liquidity conditions that have supported bitcoin's recent recovery.
- Governor Kazuo Ueda indicated a high probability of a rate hike, with officials prepared for further tightening if their economic outlook supports it.
Top Stories
