What time will the much-anticipated Coinbase start trading today?

Coinbase will be officially listed on the Nasdaq at 21:30 tonight, but trading will not start immediately and the market price will not be officially generated. The official start time of trading may be any time during the trading session, and may even come after 0:00 Beijing time.

About two weeks ago, Coinbase officially confirmed that the exact date of listing on Nasdaq is April 14. As this time node is getting closer, the market hype about this milestone continues to soar. Binance, FTX and other platforms have successively launched Coinbase's Pre-IPO products, and Coinbase stock COIN "token" call, put options and even insurance agreements have also been preemptively launched.

Considering the huge "price gap" between the market's high expectations for Coinbase's $100 billion valuation and the $250 reference share price given by Nasdaq, when can we see COIN's true "market price"? This is undoubtedly one of the most concerned issues for market participants.

Currently, most reports in the market use the opening time of the U.S. stock market (09:30 Eastern Time on April 14, 21:30 Beijing Time today) as the official listing time of Coinbase. At this time, Coinbase will indeed be officially "listed" on the Nasdaq, but after this time, COIN cannot actually be traded directly, and the market price of the stock will not be officially generated.

For new U.S. stocks, it is usually necessary to wait for 1 hour or even longer after the U.S. stock market opens on the day of listing before trading is officially opened. The start time of trading may be any time during the trading session, and there is no specific and accurate time point.

This "design" is mainly derived from an old price discovery mechanism of the New York Stock Exchange in the IPO process, that is, on the day of the new stock listing, the designated market maker will recruit large buyers and sellers to conduct stock auctions before public trading, so that the stock price can be maintained at a relatively stable level after public trading.

Although Nasdaq, as the world's first electronic exchange, has long abandoned this artificial mechanism of large-scale pre-bidding, and the process of matching and determining the opening price on the electronic trading platform can actually be completed in a very short time, Nasdaq still uses this "calm" style, that is, newly listed companies can negotiate with the Nasdaq exchange to determine a special opening time.

This means that even those very popular new stocks may not be officially open for trading until several hours after the U.S. stock market opens on the first day of listing.

Of course, this design is mainly aimed at keeping the price at a relatively stable level after the official start of trading. However, this will inevitably cause investors who are closely following Coinbase's market performance immediately after its listing to wait patiently for a longer time. For some popular new stocks, it is not uncommon to have to wait until after noon Eastern Time, which is after 0:00 Beijing Time.

In short, the wait for Coinbase to officially open for trading on Nasdaq tonight may be longer than expected.