Bitcoin extended its slide on Tuesday, dropping more than $10,000 from its all-time high last week.

The flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by 5% at $63,460.33, according to Coin Metrics. Last week, it climbed to a record $73,679.

The move helped drag other cryptocurrencies lower. Ether lost more than 5% and was recently trading at $3,287.58 after topping $4,000 last week for the first time since December 2021, a drop some analysts predicted following the network’s Dencun upgrade. The token tied to Solana fell 8%, dogecoin lost 7% and XRP slipped 2%.

Among crypto-related stocks, bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy tumbled 10%, while crypto exchange Coinbase fell 5%. Mining stocks were down across the board, with the biggest ones, Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital, lower by 6% and 5%, respectively.

Bitcoin weakness began last week as traders started taking profits after it had soared roughly 70% from the start of the year to its peak last Wednesday. Data from CryptoQuant shows a massive spike in investors selling their bitcoin at a profit on March 12.

Additionally, that profit-taking led to a spike in long liquidations of leveraged bitcoin positions. About $122 million in long liquidations occurred across centralized exchanges on Monday, according to CoinGlass. Last week, there was about $372 million in long liquidations from Wednesday to Friday.

The successful introduction of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. earlier this year has been a key contributor to bitcoin’s rally, which began even before the ETFs were launched in anticipation of their regulatory approval. At the same time, interest from investors and higher demand for bitcoin have also led to increased leverage and heightened high-frequency volatility.

Investors and analysts have warned that traders should exercise caution in March as more volatile price action, combined with an increase in trading volumes, would lead to pullbacks from bitcoin’s long-term uptrend.

Chart watchers have mostly said bitcoin is on a path to new highs but could also see steep corrections along the way.

Shares of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase soared 12% Friday at 10:05 London time in U.S. premarket trading after the company reported its first profit in two years.

Coinbase, the largest U.S. venue for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, said that net income totalled $273 million in the fourth quarter.

This is the first time that the company has reported positive net income since the fourth quarter of 2021.

Coinbase said Thursday that its net revenue was $905 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, up nearly 50% from $605 million in the same period of the previous year.

Cryptocurrencies saw a huge amount of interest from investors in the fourth quarter of last year, following news of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approving the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) — for bitcoin.

Bitcoin ETFs enable retail investors to access the cryptocurrency as a share that’s traded on a regulated exchange without directly exposing them to the underlying asset.

The news has driven heightened demand for cryptocurrencies due to anticipation that it could drive heightened interest from retail investors.

Coinbase said that transaction revenues were the primary driver of revenues for the last quarter of 2023, adding that subscription and services revenue remained relatively flat.

Coinbase added that, in the fourth quarter, the company saw heightened volatility in crypto prices resembling levels observed during the first quarter of 2023.

This was driven by approval of the bitcoin ETF and broad expectations for improving macroeconomic conditions in 2024.

Consumer trading revenue was $493 million for the quarter, up 79% quarter-over-quarter.

Speaking with CNBC Thursday, Coinbase Chief Financial Officer Alesia Haas said that the company did not have to adjust fees to account for the higher volumes coming through the platform, as this was supported by its mix of fees for “Simple” and “Advanced” traders.

“In Q4, and we’ve shared this for many quarters, a lot of the results of our fee rate is just the mix shift on our platform — who traded what product in the quarter,” she added.

“So in Q4, when we saw higher volatility, we grew Simple trading, but Advanced grew more.”

Coinbase is confident that a U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded fund will be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, told CNBC.

“I’m quite hopeful that these [ETF] applications will be granted, if only because they should be granted under the law,” Grewal said in an interview with CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal.

The SEC was recently dealt a major court setback when a judge ruled that the regulator had no basis to deny crypto-focused asset manager Grayscale’s bid to turn its huge GBTC bitcoin fund into an ETF.

The SEC last week declined to appeal that ruling by a key deadline, likely paving the way for a bitcoin-related ETF to be approved in the coming months.

“I think that the firms that have stepped forward with robust proposals for these products and services are among some of the biggest blue chips in financial services,” Grewal added.

“So that, I think, suggests that we will see progress there in short order.”

He didn’t say when that’s likely to happen, and added the caveat that any decision would ultimately be up to the SEC.

But, Grewal said, it’s likely now that the SEC will approve a bitcoin ETF soon, highlighting the regulator’s failure in court to block Grayscale from converting its GBTC bitcoin fund into an ETF.

“I think that, after the U.S. Court of Appeals made clear that the SEC could not reject these applications on an arbitrary or capricious basis, we’re going to see the commission fulfill its responsibilities. I’m quite confident of that.”

The SEC declined to comment on Grewal’s comment when contacted by CNBC.

A bitcoin ETF would give investors a way to own bitcoin without having to make a direct purchase from an exchange.

That could be more appealing to retail investors looking to gain exposure to bitcoin without having to actually own the underlying asset.

Coinbase would likely benefit from any bitcoin ETF that is ultimately approved. The company, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, is a common stock held in portfolios designed to give investors exposure to crypto.

Not all is rosy in Grayscale’s bid to turn GBTC into an ETF, however.

The asset management firm’s parent company, Digital Currency Group, along with crypto exchange Gemini and DCG subsidiary Genesis, were accused in a lawsuit from New York’s attorney general of defrauding investors of more than $1 billion.

Still, Grewal sounded a positive note on the prospect of additional bitcoin ETFs being approved — sooner rather than later.

“We think that other ETFs are going to be coming online soon enough as the SEC follows the law and is required to apply the law in a neutral way to the applications that are pending,” he said.

Bitcoin has risen about 72% in the year to date, in a comeback by stealth for the world’s biggest digital currency after huge declines in 2022.

There’s been greater investor demand for the token in recent months, as the market reacts to prospect of the Federal Reserve ending its campaign of persistent interest rate rises, and as anticipation builds around the upcoming bitcoin “halving” event, which will see rewards to bitcoin miners reduced by half, thereby limiting the coin’s supply.

Still, trading volumes have declined, as retail investors have become uninterested in engaging in the market in light of a lack of volatility and in response to severe wounds suffered by once-large industry players like FTX, BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital.

FTX collapsed into bankruptcy last year after investors fled the platform en masse because of concerns over its liquidity. The company and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, are accused of defrauding investors in a multibillion-dollar scheme. Bankman-Fried is standing trial over these allegations and has pleaded not guilty.

Addressing the trial, Grewal said he was “quite encouraged and quite optimistic that a number of the bad actors in this space are being held to account through criminal trials and through aggressive regulatory actions.”

“We are quite excited that there are a number of developments we think that are just around the corner, or underway even as we speak, that will bring back investor and consumer interest in crypto,” Grewal added.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has chosen Ireland as its main operational and regulatory hub in the European Union, the company told CNBC in an exclusive interview.

Coinbase submitted its application for a license under the EU’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which is set to come into force by December 2024, with the Central Bank of Ireland.

Coinbase has had an office in Dublin since 2018. The company employs about 100 people in Ireland.

If and when it is approved, Coinbase will have a universal “MiCA license” in Ireland, which it can then use to “passport” its services into Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and other EU countries.

That makes it easier for Coinbase to launch new products in those markets without having to apply for individual licenses in each country. Coinbase says it’s confident it will be able to win this license.

The company is planning to be operational with its MiCA license from “day one,” Nana Murugesan, Coinbase’s vice president of international, told CNBC in an interview earlier this week.

MiCA is the EU’s attempt at introducing a pan-European regulatory framework for crypto companies. It seeks to introduce protections for investors buying and selling crypto assets, like bitcoin and ethereum.

The rules will allow crypto companies to use one license in one country to operate across all 27 EU member states.

The regulation imposes a number of requirements on crypto firms, particularly exchanges, including the requirement that they don’t commingle client funds with their own assets.

“As soon as MiCA was passed into law, and even before that, we’ve been considering a number of member states,” Murugesan said. “It was a long decision making process and we’ve been very impressed with the engagement from Ireland throughout.”

“It was really important for us to choose a member state that is not only a sophisticated regulator with significant experience in regulating financial services, but also recognises the importance of a globally integrated business model, the way we are structured as a company, and also the potential of this innovative new technology.”

Currently, Coinbase has an electronic money institution license and virtual asset service provider registration in Ireland; a crypto license in Germany; and national registrations in other EU member states including Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

The company, which is headquartered in San Francisco, is one of the largest crypto trading venues globally.

The expansion move comes at a difficult time for the crypto industry. Crypto companies have been seeing their volumes decline, while fundraising has slowed, as macroeconomic conditions have gotten tougher and regulatory scrutiny has mounted.

Coinbase is banking on growth in the European Union, a continent with a total population of 450 million, and other international hubs, as it faces regulatory pressure back home — not least from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which accuses the company of operating an illegal securities venue.

Coinbase disputes the SEC’s claims, and is fighting the case. However, its aim is for there to be formal crypto legislation, rather than constant litigation in the courts.

Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, said that progress has been “slower” than he’d like when it comes to achieving crypto regulation in the U.S. But he’s hopeful for more regulatory clarity in the future.

“We’re now seeing in court cases real questions being asked about the U.S. approach to crypto regulation and in particular securities regulation,” he said. “Judge after judge is asking serious questions about the SEC’s interpretation of our US securities laws and, frankly, challenging some fundamental points that the SEC has pressed on whether tokens are securities at all.”

“MiCA, on the other hand, I think offers … a more substantial and serious approach to crypto regulation in that it isn’t caught up with the jurisdictional fights the turf battles that we have the United States over whether particular transactions or securities transactions or commodities transactions. Instead, the focus is on keeping consumers and investors safe.”

As a market for crypto, digital asset usage is less prevalent than it is in the U.S. According to Chainalysis data, Central, Northern, and Western Europe is the second-biggest crypto economy in the world, behind only North America. However, Coinbase expects lots of growth in the region.

“In recent quarters, Coinbase has earned as much as 15%, or even 20%, of top line revenue from across Europe,” Grewal told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal — the firm reported $808.3 million of sales globally in the second quarter of 2023, according to its latest earnings report.

“But for us, we’re going to approach the opportunity in a responsible, measured way, we’re going to let our customers drive our investments and drive our focus on what opportunities to pursue. It’s an exciting future.”

Coinbase has also decided to make Germany its regional “talent hub,” and will look to ramp up its hiring in that market to localize and tailor its product specifically for Germany.

“We are very grateful to Germany for all the support they have provided,” Murugesan told CNBC. “Our German operation has grown from strength to strength and more than doubled in headcount.”

Coinbase may even look to launch new products in Europe first before rolling them out in the U.S., Murugesan said.

The EU will be a “testbed” for Coinbase to think about “utilitarian” functions of crypto that people need in their daily lives, such as payments and transacting rather than trading, he told CNBC.

“With MiCA and the clarity that it offers, it allows us to innovate,” he added. “And hopefully, we’ll see some of those daily use cases roll out in EU first.” 

Daniel Seifert, vice president of EMEA for Coinbase, said the company is also looking to launch integrations with other payment providers to make it easier for users to access digital tokens through Coinbase.

“There’s lots of exciting plans for the region that we’re going to see in the coming weeks and months,” Seifert said.

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report

Car-sharing service Turo filed its IPO prospectus in January 2022. A month earlier, Reddit said it submitted a draft registration for a public offering. Instacart’s confidential paperwork was filed in May of last year.

None of them have hit the market yet.

Despite a bloated pipeline of companies waiting to go public and a rebound in tech stocks that pushed the Nasdaq up 30% in the first half of 2023, the IPO drought continues. There hasn’t been a notable venture-backed tech initial public offering in the U.S. since December 2021, when software vendor HashiCorp debuted on the Nasdaq.

Across all industries, only 10 companies raised $100 million or more in U.S. initial share sales in the first six months of the year, according to FactSet. During the same stretch in 2021, there were 517 such transactions, highlighted by billion-dollar-plus IPOs from companies including dating site Bumble, online lender Affirm, and software developers UiPath and SentinelOne.

As the second half of 2023 gets underway, investors and bankers aren’t expecting much champagne popping for the rest of the year.

Many once high-flying companies are still hanging onto their old valuations, failing to reconcile with a new reality after a brutal 2022. Additionally, muted economic growth has led businesses and consumers to cut costs and delay software purchases, which is making it particularly difficult for companies to comfortably forecast the next couple of quarters. Wall Street likes predictability.

So if you’re waiting on a splashy debut from design software maker Canva, ticket site StubHub or data management company Databricks, be patient.

“There’s a disconnect between valuations in 2021 and valuations today, and that’s a hard pill to swallow,” said Lise Buyer, founder of IPO consultancy Class V Group in Portola Valley, California. “There will be incremental activity after a period of absolute radio silence but it isn’t like companies are racing to get out the door.”

The public markets tell an uneven story. This year’s rally has brought the Nasdaq to within 15% of its record from late 2021, while an index of cloud stocks is still off by roughly 50%.

Some signs of optimism popped up this month as Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock more than doubled on its first day of trading, indicating high demand from retail investors. Buyer noted that institutions were also enthused about the deal.

Last Friday, Israeli beauty and tech company Oddity, which runs the Il Makiage and Spoiled Child brands, filed to go public on the Nasdaq.

That all comes after a big month for secondary offerings. According to data from Goldman Sachs, May was the busiest month for public stock sales since November 2021, driven by a jump in follow-on deals.

While investors are craving new names, they’re much more discerning when it comes to technology than they were at the tail end of the decade-long bull market.

Mega-cap stocks Apple and Nvidia have seen outsized gains this year and are back to trading near all-time highs, boosting the Nasdaq because of their hefty weightings in the index. But the advances are not evenly spread across the industry.

In particular, investors who bet on less mature businesses are still hurting. The companies that held the seven-biggest tech IPOs in the U.S. in 2021 have lost at least 40% of their value since their debut. Coinbase, which went public through a direct listing, is down more than 80%.

That year’s IPO class featured high-growth businesses with even higher cash burn, an equation that worked fine until recession concerns and rising interest rates pushed investors into assets better positioned to withstand an economic slowdown and increased capital costs.

Bankers and investors tell CNBC that optimism is picking up, but ongoing economic concerns and the valuation overhang from the pre-2022 era set the stage for a quiet second half for tech IPOs.

One added challenge is that fixed income alternatives are back. Following a lengthy stretch of near-zero interest rates, the Federal Reserve this year lifted its target rate to between 5% and 5.25%. Parking money in short-term Treasurys, certificates of deposit and high-yield savings offerings can now generate annual returns of 5% or more.

“Interest rates are not only about the cost of financing, but also getting investors to trade out of 5% risk-free returns,” said Jake Dollarhide, CEO of Longbow Asset Management. “You can make 15%-20% in the stock market but lose 15%-20%.”

Dollarhide, whose firm has invested in milestone tech offerings like Google and Facebook, says IPOs are important. They offer more opportunities for money managers, and they generate profits for the tech ecosystem that help fund the next generation of innovative companies.

But he understands why there’s skepticism about the window reopening. Perhaps the biggest recent bust in tech investing followed the boom in special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which brought scores of less mature companies to the public market through reverse mergers.

Names like Opendoor, Clover Health, 23andMe and Desktop Metal have lost more than 80% of their value since hitting the market via SPAC.

“It seems the foul odor of failure from the 2021 SPAC craze has spoiled the appetite from investors seeking IPOs,” Dollarhide said. “I think that’s done some harm to the traditional IPO market.”

Private markets have felt the impact. Venture funding slowed dramatically last year from record levels and has stayed relatively suppressed, outside of the red-hot area of artificial intelligence. Companies have been forced to cut staff and close offices in order to preserve cash and right-size their business

Pre-IPO companies like Stripe, Canva and Klarna have taken huge hits to their valuations, either through internal measures or markdowns from outside investors.

Few have been hit as hard as Instacart, which has repeatedly slashed its valuation, from a peak of $39 billion to as low as $10 billion in late 2022. Last year, the company confidentially registered for an IPO, but still hasn’t filed publicly and doesn’t have immediate plans to do so.

Similarly, Reddit said in December 2021 that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to go public. That was before the online ad market took a dive, with Facebook suffering through three straight quarters of declining revenue and Google’s ad sales also slipping.

Now Reddit is in the midst of a business model shift, moving its focus beyond ads and toward generating revenue from third-party developers for the use of its data. But that change sparked a protest this month across a wide swath of Reddit’s most popular communities, leaving the company with plenty to sort through before it can sell itself to the public.

A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.

Turo was so close to an IPO that it went beyond a confidential filing and published its full S-1 registration statement in January 2022. When stocks sold off, the offering was indefinitely delayed. To avoid withdrawing its filing, the company has to continue updating its quarterly results.

Like Instacart, Turo operates in the sharing economy, a dark spot for investors last year. Airbnb, Uber and DoorDash have all bounced back in 2023, but they’ve also instituted significant job cuts. Turo has gone in the opposite direction, more than doubling its full-time head count to 868 at the end of March from 429 at the time of its original IPO filing in 2021, according to its latest filing. The company reportedly laid off about 30% of its staff in 2020, during the Covid pandemic.

Turo and Instacart could still go public by year-end if market conditions continue to improve, according to sources familiar with the companies who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Byron Deeter, a cloud software investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, doesn’t expect any notable activity this year, and says the next crop of companies to debut will most likely wait until after showing their first-quarter results in 2024.

“The companies that were on file or were considering going out a little over a year ago, they’ve pulled, stopped updating, and overwhelmingly have no plans to refile this calendar year,” said Deeter, whose investments include Twilio and HashiCorp. “We’re 10 months from the real activity picking up,” Deeter said, adding that uncertainty around next year’s presidential election could lead to further delays.

In the absence of IPOs, startups have to consider the fate of their employees, many of whom have a large amount of their net worth tied up in their company’s equity, and have been waiting years for a chance to sell some of it.

Stripe addressed the issue in March, announcing that investors would buy $6.5 billion worth of employee shares. The move lowered the payment company’s valuation to about $50 billion from a high of $95 billion. Deeter said many late-stage companies are looking at similar transactions, which typically involve allowing employees to sell around 20% of their vested stock.

He said his inbox fills up daily with brokers trying to “schlep little blocks of shares” from employees at late-stage startups.

“The Stripe problem is real and the general liquidity problem is real,” Deeter said. “Employees are agitating for some path to liquidity. With the public market still pretty closed, they’re asking for alternatives.”

G Squared is one of the venture firms active in buying up employee equity. Larry Aschebrook, the firm’s founder, said about 60% of G Squared’s capital goes to secondary purchases, helping companies provide some level of liquidity to staffers.

Aschebrook said in an interview that transactions started to pick up in the second quarter of last year and continued to increase to the point where “now it’s overwhelming.” Companies and their employees have gotten more realistic about the market reset, so significant chunks of equity can now be purchased for 50% to 70% below valuations from 2021 financing rounds, he said.

Because of nondisclosure agreements, Aschebrook said he couldn’t name any private company shares he’s purchased of late, but he said his firm previously bought pre-IPO secondary stock in Pinterest, Coursera, Spotify and Airbnb.

“Right now there’s a significant need for that release of pressure,” Aschebrook said. “We’re assisting companies with elongating their private lifecycle and solving problems presented by staying private longer.”

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SEC Chair Gary Gensler stepped up his attack on the crypto industry this week, suing Coinbase and Binance for securities violations and casting doubt on the future of token trading.

Crypto investors took the hint. Four of the 10 most valuable coins plunged in value by at least 15% this week, according to CoinMarketCap, a sell-off sparked by the lawsuits and Gensler’s interview with CNBC on Tuesday, in which he said “we don’t need more digital currency.”

In alleging that Coinbase was acting as an unregistered broker and exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission said at least 13 crypto assets available to the company’s customers were considered “crypto asset securities.” They include Solana’s SOL token, Cardano’s ADA token, Polygon’s MATIC coin and Protocol Labs’ Filecoin token (FIL).

Trading app Robinhood followed on Friday by announcing that, starting June 27, it will no longer support trading of coins from Cardano, Polygon and Solana. The company said “no other coins are affected.” Also on Friday, Crypto.com said it will shut down its U.S. institutional exchange.

“No other coins are affected and your crypto is still safe on Robinhood,” the company said in a post.

Cardano’s coin, the seventh-most valuable cryptocurrency, according to CoinMarketCap, tumbled 20% in the past week. Solana, ranked ninth, dropped 18%. Polygon, ranked 10th, also slid 18%. Filecoin, which is further down the list, dropped 19%. Binance’s BNB token, ranked fourth, fell 16%.

Bitcoin and ethereum, the two most popular cryptocurrencies, were more stable, each declining less than 5%.

Gensler, who was appointed to head the SEC by President Joe Biden in 2021, has spent much of the past year going after crypto firms and exchanges for effectively selling highly speculative and risky securities dressed up as something else.

From high-profile fraud cases involving Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Do Kwon’s Terraform Labs to dozens of charges involving coin offerings and alleged false marketing, Gensler has made the once-burgeoning crypto industry his primary takedown target.

“The investing public has the benefit of U.S. securities laws,” Gensler said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday. “Crypto should be no different, and these platforms, these intermediaries need to come into compliance.”

Gensler’s TV appearance came after the SEC sued Coinbase and said the company should be “permanently restrained and enjoined” from “operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.”

Shares of Coinbase, the only major crypto exchange that’s publicly traded in the U.S., sank 18% this week. Coinbase legal chief Paul Grewal told CNBC in a statement that the SEC’s approach to enforcement without laying out clear rules is “hurting America’s economic competitiveness and companies like Coinbase that have a demonstrated commitment to compliance.”

A day earlier, in its lawsuit against Binance, the SEC alleged that the company and founder Changpeng Zhao comingled billions of dollars worth of user funds and sent them to a European company controlled by Zhao.

While Binance claims no official headquarters and does most of its business overseas, the SEC’s complaint cited a senior executive allegedly telling a compliance officer that the company was operating as a “[f—ing] unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

In a blog post, Binance said it was “disappointed” in the SEC’s suit and said it had “engaged in extensive good-faith discussions to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve their investigations.”

Others named in the SEC lawsuit also weighed in after this week’s charges landed.

The Cardano Foundation, which works to advance use of its namesake technology, said in a tweet that it disagrees with the labeling of its ADA coin as a security and “we look forward to the continued engagement with regulators and policymakers to achieve legal clarity and certainty on these matters.”

Protocol Labs, the developer of Filecoin, said in a series of tweets on Thursday that the token is critical to the operation of its distributed storage network. It’s how people buy storage from providers, and Protocol says the cost is much less than what users would pay Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud.

“Filecoin is a cryptocurrency-powered global storage network preserving humanity’s most important information, not a security,” Protocol Labs tweeted.

In its 101-page complaint against Coinbase, the SEC made clear that regardless of whether these tokens have some level of utility, they can easily be purchased on the app by people who have no interest beyond investing. And Coinbase generates revenue by executing those trades.

“Coinbase makes these crypto assets available for trading,” the SEC said, “without restricting transactions to those who might acquire or treat the asset as anything other than as an investment.”

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