- Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, sold shares worth $291.8 million on the company's first trading day.
- Coinbase went public on the Nasdaq last week via direct listing.
- The crypto exchange was briefly valued at over $100 billion on its first trading day.
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Coinbase CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong sold shares worth $291.8 million of his company in its first trading day on the Nasdaq.
Filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed Armstrong sold three groups of shares, totalling 749,999, at prices ranging from Coinbase's opening price of $381 to $410.40.
Following the launch, Armstrong's stakes in the company were estimated to be worth around $13 billion based on the company's first-day closing price of $328.28.
Shareholders sold stakes worth around $5 billion on the day of Coinbase's market debut, Coindesk reported over the weekend.
The crypto exchange went public via a direct listing last Wednesday. Though its reference price had been $250, it opened at $381. Shares traded as low as $310 and as high as $429.54 throughout the day.
At its high point, this meant the company was briefly valued at as much as $112 billion on its first day of trading, catapulting it into the list of top 100 most valuable US companies.
In a direct listing, existing shareholders, like Armstrong, offer their stakes in a company to the public, rather than the company offering them through a third party like an investment bank. Companies do not need to issue new shares in a direct listing, saving money and time, and existing investors are not bound by a six-month lockup period.
Coinbase is the biggest company so far to take the direct listing approach when going public.
On Monday, its shares were down by around 2.5% in premarket trading at $333.21 at 7:01 ET.
Bitcoin, which is one of the cryptocurrencies that trades on the Coinbase platform, had its biggest daily fall since February over the weekend after reaching record-highs last week.
