REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Shares in Coinbase popped as much as 9.9% on Monday, propelled by a sudden bitcoin rally that has seen the cryptocurrency flirt with the $40,000 threshold.

Since the company's April debut, the stock has gradually trended down from a high of $429 on the first day of trading. The stock has tended to follow movements in the crypto market, principally bitcoin, with some investors using Coinbase and similar stocks as a way to get crypto exposure via equities.

The VanEck Digital Transformation ETF, which tracks top crypto-adjacent stocks like Coinbase and Square, was up 11% on Monday.

Coinbase's surge coincided with a similar upturn in crypto mining stocks on Monday. Some, like Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital, have tended to outperform bitcoin, as they have during Monday's rally.

As Riot Blockchain CEO Jason Les told Insider previously, his company's overperformance relative to bitcoin reflects the "real substantial operational expansion that we have been executing on this year."

 Coinbase was trading at $242.38 as of 11:47 a.m. ET, up 7.76% so far during the day.

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