The Briefing: Coinbase’s Mixed Debut

Coinbase executives are surely thrilled with the crypto firm’s public debut, which valued the company at the close at nearly $84 billion, making it one of the biggest new public listings in tech in a while. Yet the opening day didn’t quite turn out the way some had expected, showing how hard it is to gauge where a stock that lists directly—without selling new shares, as occurs in an IPO—will initially trade.

In private market trading earlier this year, Coinbase shares hit a high of $375, translating to a valuation of $95 billion, which put that number into the popular consciousness for what Coinbase would be worth when it went public. While the stock opened a little above that level and rallied further early on, it ended up spending most of the day falling from there, closing at $328.