Coinbase is on the Nasdaq, in case you want to bet on cryptocurrency using dollars

The nice thing about Coinbase going public today is that if you want to get involved with cryptocurrency without ever leaving the almighty dollar, now you can.

On Tuesday, Nasdaq set $250 as a reference price for Coinbase, though no one necessarily bought at that price because this is a direct listing. Coinbase closed trading today at $328.28, giving it a market cap of $85.8 billion, more than that of the company behind the Nasdaq exchange. It’s yet another marker for how normal cryptocurrency has become — and how much easier it is for normies to get involved.

Recall, if you can, the early 2000s: banking crisis, panicked market, excited cypherpunks. The idea behind bitcoin was relatively simple: it emerged from a specific distrust of...

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