Is Coinbase CEO Dumping $COIN Shares? Here’s What Really Happened

The latest shares sale made by Brian Armstrong, the Chief Executive Officer of embattled crypto trading platform Coinbase Global Inc is currently raising eyebrows in the community. As first pointed out by crypto insights provider WhaleWire, a total of 29,730 shares was sold by the industry leader, a day before the SEC lawsuit was filed.

The sales saw Armstrong avoid the 20% slump in the price of the shares following the revelation of the SEC crackdown. In what many are considering to be an illegal move as it looks like an insider trading move, new revelations have been brought to the fore by Fox Business Journalist Eleanor Terrett.

According to official filings from the SEC, the sales had already been pre-planned since August 2022 and as such is billed to comply with Rule 10b5-1(c). As Eleanor pointed out, pre-planning share sales on defined days of the month/quarter is not an unusual thing on Wall Street and that it is perfectly legal.

According to the @SECGov's filings database this was part of a pre-planned stock sale initiated in August 2022 that was intended to comply with Rule 10b5-1(c).
Setting a sale to happen on the 1st Monday of the month/start of the 3rd fiscal quarter, I'm told, isn't too unusual. https://t.co/iZBrsqhet9

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) June 8, 2023

This new detail has changed the narrative that Armstrong’s COIN sales were based on the knowledge that the company will be sued by the SEC to tank the value of the shares. 

Community Reaction to Coinbase Shares Sales

Despite the claims and counterclaims, the community appears not to be pacified with the actions of Brain Armstrong as the sales of the Coinbase shares depicted a lack of loyalty in a way.

One Twitter user named David Orr said in a tweet;

“It is a fairly easy process to cancel/terminate a 10b5 plan. The optics here are terrible given his PR campaign to label himself and Coinbase as the saviors of crypto.”

The entire situation has seen other commenters also stand in solidarity with the Coinbase CEO. This selloff is not uncommon with Brian Armstrong as an earlier report by Coingape also depicts a similar scenario back in May.

It remains unclear whether the crypto veteran will change the scheduling of his shares sales to pacify the community in the future. At the moment, COIN shares have inked a marginal gain of 0.77% at the time of writing to $53.67.