Last Wednesday Coinbase officially began trading on the NASDAQ, and in less than a week company insiders sold roughly $5 billion worth of shares.
Executives at the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase sold approximately $5 billion of stock less than a week after the company started trading on the NASDAQ. Because Coinbase went public through a direct listing, one common way for new investors to acquire shares is by purchasing them from existing shareholders.
Information from Capital Market Laboratories and various Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings shows that several Coinbase insiders liquidated portions of their holdings.
Company insiders sold 12,965,079 shares, worth more than $4.6 billion based on Friday’s closing price of $344.38 per share. CEO Brian Armstrong collected about $291 million on opening day (April 14) after selling 749,999 shares across three tranches at prices between $381 and $410.40 per share. According to SEC filings, those sales represent only about 1.5% of Armstrong’s total Coinbase stake; he still holds more than $1 billion in remaining shares.
Another notable transaction involved Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas, who sold 255,500 shares at $388.70 per share. The largest single seller was board member and venture investor Fred Wilson, who sold 4.7 million shares for about $1.82 billion. It is unclear how many shares Wilson retains, though Coinbase filings attribute roughly 10% ownership of the company to him. Wilson and his venture firm are among the primary beneficiaries of the recent $5 billion in insider sales.
Marc Andreessen — computer engineer, venture investor and Coinbase director — owns more than 10% of the exchange’s shares, both personally and through other entities. He sold a total of 1.18 million shares, generating about $449.2 million.
Some reports claimed that a number of Coinbase insiders sold the majority of their personal holdings. Meltem Demirors of CoinShares disputed those claims as misleading. In a tweet she emphasized that the details matter, noting that many executives still hold substantial unvested options that form the bulk of their potential ownership. She stated that the insiders sold less than 10% of their total potential holdings.
Coinbase’s public debut has stirred considerable activity in the cryptocurrency community, and many observers view the listing as a sign of the market’s growing maturity.