Only one could take the crown.
Coinbase has become the first crypto company to join the S&P 500, beating out long-time Bitcoin bull Strategy for the coveted spot.
Shares of the crypto exchange surged 11% in after-hours trading to nearly $230 on the news.
“This milestone,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote on X, “represents what the true believers, from retail investors to institutional investors to our employees and partners, knew all along – crypto is here to stay.”
With a market capitalisation of nearly $53 billion, Coinbase is expected to slot in around rank 190 in the S&P 500, replacing Discover Financial Services when it officially starts trading on Monday.
Comeback season
The inclusion cements Coinbase’s status as the largest pure crypto company on the S&P 500 index, a milestone some expected Strategy to reach first.
While Strategy is often grouped with crypto firms due to its massive Bitcoin holdings, it’s technically a software company that generates the bulk of its revenue from enterprise analytics products.
Still, it has become best known as the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with nearly 570,000 Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
The firm joined the Nasdaq-100 in December but has struggled to clear the S&P 500’s profitability requirement hurdles.
Coinbase, by contrast, reported $2 billion in revenue in the first quarter of the year, up 23% year-over-year, and recently sealed a $2.9 billion deal to acquire Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange.
The listing also caps a series of recent wins for Coinbase, including a major legal victory in February when the SEC agreed to drop its two-year enforcement case against the exchange.
Crypto market movers
- Bitcoin has lost 1.6% over the past 24 hours and is trading at $102,370.
- Ethereum is down 2.3% in the same period to $2,450.
What we’re reading
- Robinhood’s crypto and tokenisation push to double share price, analysts say ― DL News
- DeFi Looping Comes to Apollo’s $1.3 Billion Credit Fund. What Could Go Wrong? ― Unchained
- So. Many. Market. Catalysts. ― Milk Road
- Trump memecoin makes $455m for traders like Dingaling, and the token’s backers ― DL News
Kyle Baird is DL News’ Weekend Editor. Got a tip? Email at kbaird@dlnews.com.
