Coinbase to go public

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has filed to go public via a direct listing on Nasdaq.

Alex Wilhelm from TechCrunch reported:

This morning Coinbase, an American cryptocurrency exchange, released an S-1 filing ahead of its direct listing. The company’s public debut has been hotly anticipated thanks to recent activity amongst bitcoin and other blockchain-based assets, the company’s controversial political positions and its spiking valuation on private exchanges.

Russell Brandom from The Verge wrote:

In an attached letter to investors, founder Brian Armstrong presented cryptocurrency as an equalizing force in financial markets — and Coinbase as the company at the forefront of that change.

“The current financial system is rife with high fees, unequal access, and barriers to innovation,” the letter reads. “If the world economy ran on a common set of standards that could not be manipulated by any company or country, the world would be a more fair and free place, and human progress would accelerate.”

Forbes’ Jeff Kauflin noted:

Coinbase last raised venture capital funding in October 2018 and was then valued at $8 billion. But its shares recently sold on Nasdaq’s secondary market, where shares of a private company’s stock can trade after they were first issued but before the business goes public, at an implied valuation of $77 billion. Investors speculate that Coinbase will be worth more than $100 billion when it starts trading publicly on the Nasdaq.