U.S. crypto exchange platform Coinbase has plunged from its No. 1 ranking on App Store after the May crypto crash saw Bitcoin lose more than half its value, other coins nosedive as much as 63 percent in a week, and investors lose their euphoria.
Ranked No. 1 on Apple’s App Store on May 10 and May 11, Coinbase is now No. 316, according to data from the blockchain software company The Block Crypto.
Coinbase went public through a direct listing on April 14, trading at $381 per share, then spiked to almost $430 before falling back. On the same day, bitcoin broke above $64,000 to hit a new all-time high. Neither bitcoin nor Coinbase has come close to those levels since. Coinbase shares were trading at $238.59 as of this writing. Bitcoin was trading at $34,652.95.
Volatility hasn’t been particularly good for Coinbase’s share price, CNBC reported. “It’s possible that over the longer term, Coinbase’s mainstreaming of crypto leads to greater adoption and higher highs for bitcoin, dogecoin and the rest. But for now, when the crypto exchange makes a move, it marks the peak of euphoria and has been a reliable sell signal,” Jesse Pound wrote.
Bitcoin activity seems to be slowing down, NewsBTC reported. The daily trading volume on the leading spot exchanges has dropped to the lowest in 2021. One reason for the slowdown could be the stagnating market. The price of a Bitcoin share has been stuck between $30,000 and $50,000 for weeks. “The market is behaving as a rangebound one where investors buy at the support line and sell off at the resistance point,” Hououin Kyouma wrote for NewsBTC.
Crypto fan Elon Musk, whose market-moving tweets are credited with helping drive up the price of bitcoin, sent out a tweet on May 12 saying that Tesla will no longer accept bitcoin as payment for electric vehicles due to environmental concerns. Some think this helped to cause the May crypto crash. The Chinese government added to negative sentiment by cracking down on Bitcoin mining. As a result, Chinese miners – who account for around 75 percent of the Bitcoin computational capacity used to secure the network – dumped Bitcoin.
The recent crash in the value of bitcoin has “shaken emerging mainstream acceptance in the short term, but crypto will achieve greater adoption in time,” Simon Chapman predicted in a report for New Statesman.
Isaiah Jackson, the author of “Bitcoin and Black America,” issued a warning to Black people about the crypto tech company Coinbase. “Idc if I have to debate 1 Million black people You niggas are going to learn: 1. Delete Coinbase 2. Stay away from XRP 3. DCA Bitcoin,” Jackson tweeted on Dec. 30.
Jackson listed his reasons, among them, bad customer service and Coinbase’s special deal with the Feds.
According to publicly available documents, Coinbase has struck procurement deals with U.S. agencies including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for a cryptocurrency investigations tool called “Coinbase Analytics,” CoinDesk reported.
Coinbase isn’t the only crypto exchange company looking to make deals with the government. Apparently, it’s a crowded field but it does raise privacy concerns.
Then there’s also the issue of the Coinbase race problem. The country’s fast-growing cryptocurrency startup, Coinbase has come under attack from employees who said they were being treated unfairly because of their race. Numerous Black employees at Coinbase publicly complained about discrimination.
Image: mikhail badaev
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 74: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin returns for a new season of the GHOGH podcast to discuss Bitcoin, bubbles, and Biden. He talks about the risk factors for Bitcoin as an investment asset including origin risk, speculative market structure, regulatory, and environment. Are broader financial markets in a massive speculative bubble?