Big news hit the crypto world. Coinbase, the largest place in the U.S. to trade digital money, is joining the S&P 500 index. Think of the S&P 500 like the main club for the biggest companies in America. Getting in is a pretty big deal.
- Coinbase, a major crypto exchange, is set to join the S&P 500, a significant move for the crypto industry. This inclusion highlights the growing acceptance of digital assets in traditional finance.
- Coinbase’s earnings have fluctuated with the volatile crypto market, but recent results show improvement, contributing to its eligibility for the S&P 500. The company’s strategic moves, like acquiring Deribit, are aimed at expanding its business.
- The move signals the increasing integration of crypto into the mainstream financial world, with Coinbase joining other companies that offer crypto services. This could lead to greater acceptance and investment in the crypto space.
CNBC reported the news. Coinbase will take the spot held by Discover Financial Services. When the word got out, Coinbase shares (that’s ticker COIN) jumped up. They climbed 8% after the regular trading day ended.
Right now, COIN trades for about $226 after hours. That’s down quite a bit from its highest price ever, which was over $343 back in early December. The change in the S&P 500 happens before trading starts on May 19.
Coinbase didn’t do a normal IPO (initial public offering) when it went public on April 14, 2021. It did a direct listing on the Nasdaq. It was the first big company focused only on crypto to do that. Its market value (how much the whole company is worth) is around $53 billion now. When it first listed, that value hit about $85 billion.
Back in February, an analyst named Owen Lau at Oppenheimer thought Coinbase might join the S&P 500 soon. This was after the company grew for five months straight. Lau kept his “buy” rating on the stock and even raised his price prediction for the price to $388.
So, what does it take to get into this S&P 500 club? Well, a company needs to show it made money in the most recent three months. It also needs to have made money over the past year combined. Coinbase’s earnings haven’t always been steady. The crypto market goes up and down a lot, you see. That makes things a bit wild.
For instance, Coinbase made a lot of money, $7.4 billion, in 2021. That was a good year. But then in the middle of 2022, things got tough. They lost $1.1 billion just in those three months. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster, isn’t it? Trying to predict crypto earnings is like trying to guess the weather in five different cities at once.
But things have been looking up lately. The rules for crypto companies have been a bit easier under the current government. This has helped Coinbase. Some other crypto places, like Bullish, Gemini, and Kraken, have also said they might go public too because the rules feel better.
Coinbase recently shared its results for the first three months of 2025. They reported making $527 million after some adjustments. Their total money coming in was $2 billion. That was less than the $2.3 billion they made in the last three months of 2024.
Money from trades dipped too. It went down 19% to $1.2 billion in the first quarter. The total amount of crypto traded on their platform also went down by 10%. So, while they made money, it wasn’t quite as much as before.
Earlier this month, Coinbase made a big move. They agreed to buy a company called Deribit. Deribit is a place where people trade crypto derivatives. These are like contracts based on crypto prices, not the actual crypto itself. The deal is worth $2.9 billion.
Buying Deribit will help Coinbase grow its business in derivatives. This is a smart move because trading these kinds of contracts makes up a much bigger part of the total crypto trading volume around the world than just buying and selling the actual crypto. Coinbase is already the main place for buying and selling crypto directly in the U.S.
It’s interesting to see a pure crypto company join the S&P 500. Some other companies already in the index do offer crypto services. Companies like Block, which used to be Square, and PayPal, and even Visa, have dipped their toes into the crypto waters. But they aren’t *just* crypto companies.
What about MicroStrategy? That company holds billions of dollars worth of bitcoins. They are a big name in the crypto world because of that. But they aren’t in the S&P 500. Why not? Their total market value isn’t big enough to make the cut for the index. It just shows that holding a lot of bitcoin isn’t the same as being a massive company across the board.
So, Coinbase is heading into the big leagues. It’s a sign that crypto is becoming more accepted in the traditional money world. It will be interesting to watch how COIN performs now that it’s part of such a major index. It puts a pure crypto company right alongside some of the oldest and largest businesses out there. Quite a journey for a company dealing in digital bits and bytes, wouldn’t you say?
