Coinbase Stock Surges 12% on Brazil Expansion News

Coinbase stock is today up 12% after the cryptocurrency exchange announced its expansion to Brazil.

America’s biggest digital asset exchange said Tuesday that it would provide customers in the country with a platform that allows them to buy and sell crypto with Brazilian reais. Customers will also be able to withdraw reais from the exchange by using Brazilian instant payment platform Pix.

Coinbase said that it would also provide customers with an app and 24/7 chat support in Brazilian Portuguese. 

Its COIN stock $75.15 and peaked at $84.79 midday Tuesday. It has since settled at $83.99.

“While we are enhancing our product offerings today, we have a strong history in Brazil,” Coinbase Vice President of International and Business Development Nana Murugesan said in a statement. “We established a technology hub in the country in 2021, with engineering talent developing crypto and Web3 technologies using Brazilian expertise for Brazil and beyond.”

 He added that Coinbase’s investment arm, Coinbase Ventures, had been focusing on Brazil by investing in crypto companies in the country such as Hashdex and Ledn. 

Coinbase, which went public in 2021 and trades under COIN on the Nasdaq, is now trading for $84.19 per share, a 12% 24-hour jump. 

Its price surge comes as U.S. tech stocks have also had a good trading day: the tech-heavy Nasdaq is today up 184.57 points, or 1.58%.

Coinbase is clearly looking overseas to expand: just last week, the San Francisco-based company said it was accelerating its “Go Broad, Go Deep” strategy to grow its presence on every continent—except for Antarctica.

Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy and the third largest economy in the Americas after the U.S. and Canada. 

It is also big on crypto: it has more Bitcoin ETFs than any other Latin American nation and many of the country’s major banks offer investors some type of digital asset exposure.