The Coinbase stock has been on an incredible run.
The share price of the company has almost quadrupled in this past year. Funds centered around an insider played the stock market nearly perfectly. Trusts and funds associated with Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and Paradigm have sold at the peak, purchased the lows, and taken profit.
Ehrsam disclosed his ownership of 17.7 millions shares in five separate entities, prior to Coinbase listing directly on April 20, 2021.
Ehrsam initially sold, via a trust under his name, a bit more than 1.4 Million Coinbase Shares in the month following Coinbase’s direct listing.
This trust earned $472 million, which is $328.86 on average per share. COIN fell 90% in the following years, and briefly dropped below $30 at the beginning of 2023.
Last week the trust sold 81,530 more shares, each at $106,94, for a total of $8,7 million. Forbes values Ehrsam’s wealth at $1.8billion.
Coinbase’s stock is currently trading at around $128. The company that was valued at $8 billion in January has now grown to more than 30 billion dollars, which is slightly behind Spotify but ahead of Moderna vaccines.
Paradigm is also buying, as has Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lutke (who serves on the board).
Paradigm One LP – of which Ehrsam, 35, was a managing director until he stepped down last month – bought more than 1.2 millions Coinbase shares in trades between May 2022 and 2023.
It’s almost exactly the same as what Ehrsam Trust sold after Coinbase went direct. Paradigm One spent less than $77 million on the acquisition, paying an average of $62.73 for each share.
These shares have a current value of almost $157,000,000, resulting in a paper gain greater than 100%. OpenInsider, which collects US Securities and Exchange Commission documents, reports that the fund has not yet sold Coinbase shares.
Brian Armstrong sold 2% his Coinbase shares
It’s worth stressing that the buying and selling has been split between Paradigm One and Ehrsam’s trust — technically separate entities sold the top, bought the bottom and took profits.
The majority of Ehrsam’s trading was in accordance with plans filed ahead of time with the SEC.
But overall per his disclosures, Ehrsam entities now own a little more than 17.4 million Coinbase shares — almost 99% of his share count before offloading nearly half-a-billion dollars in stock after Coinbase went public. Also, he’s got a nice $400 million.
All this while his Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong has been busy fulfilling his pledge to sell 2% of his COIN stake to fund other ventures, including decentralized science startup ResearchHub — which helps pay researchers in cryptocurrency to do science — and life extension play NewLimit.
As of last week, Armstrong has sold nearly 794,000 Coinbase shares since his initial tweet — more than 2% of his COIN stake disclosed to the SEC in 2021.
Armstrong earned $53.7 million from these transactions, or $67.58 on average per share. Armstrong would have made up to $101 million if he had sold all the shares today.
Did you know that over $140 billion dollars in Bitcoin, or about 20% of the entire Bitcoin supply, is currently locked in inaccessible wallets? Or maybe you have lost access to your Bitcoin wallet? Don’t let those funds remain out of reach! AI Seed Phrase Finder is here to help you regain access effortlessly. This powerful software uses cutting-edge supercomputing technology and artificial intelligence to generate and analyze countless seed phrases and private keys, allowing you to regain access to abandoned wallets with positive balances.
