Coinbase CFO, Alesia Haas, has expressed joy that the business can bring transparency to the digital currency economy.
America’s largest cryptocurrency exchange – Coinbase – successful “listing” on Nasdaq is an important event, paving the way for the digital currency era, and at the same time demonstrating that digital currencies as bitcoin, ethereum … is gradually being accepted.
Instead of using the form of initial public offering (IPO), Coinbase offered the floor through a direct listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York City (USA). This business does not raise new capital but allows existing shareholders the opportunity to sell their shares on the market.
On April 14, US time, Coinbase was officially “listed on the floor”. When the market opened, Coinbase’s share price traded at $381 per share, up 52.4% from its reference price of $250 per share, but then cooled down and closed the first session. at $328.28 per share, giving Coinbase a valuation of $85.78 billion. During this volatile trading session, the valuation of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States at one point jumped to $112 billion.
Coinbase’s IPO is of particular interest to investors as the value of many cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed and is attracting a host of mainstream companies to dive into the field.
In an interview, Coinbase CFO, Alesia Haas, expressed joy that the business was able to bring transparency to the digital currency economy, the ecosystem Coinbase has built-in nearly 10 years.
It was founded in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong, a former software engineer at Airbnb, and Fred Ehrsam, a former Goldman Sachs trader. Blockchain.info co-founder Ben Reeves was part of the original founding team but later split from Armstrong due to differing views on how Coinbase wallets should work. The remaining founding team registered to participate in the YCombinator Summer 2012 incubator program.
In October 2012, the company launched a service to buy and sell bitcoin via bank transfer. By May 2013, the company had received a $5 million Series A investment led by Fred Wilson from venture capital firm Union Square Ventures. In December of the same year, the company received a $25 million investment from venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures (USV), and Ribbit Capital.
After several years of growth, the San Francisco-based company has 56 million users worldwide, with an estimated $223 billion in assets, and holds an 11.3% market share of crypto assets. In September 2020, Coinbase was valued at less than $6 billion, but this number has increased sharply with the rise of bitcoin, increasing from $6,500 in April 2020 to more than $62,000 by mid-April 2021.
Coinbase’s revenue is estimated to increase nearly tenfold within a year to $1.8 billion through the first quarter of 2021, while profits are estimated to grow 25-fold, to $730-800 million.
Coinbase’s successful direct listing has “produced” many new billionaires in the world, first of all the two founders of Coinbase. Currently, the total value of shares of two co-founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam is about $ 16 billion and $ 2 billion respectively.
Soona Amhaz, a partner at digital currency investment firm Volt Capital, once said that Coinbase’s “listing” is more than just an exciting development for digital assets. The expert emphasized that the story of digital currency does not end with Coinbase’s “listing”, but from now on, this is also the foundation for digital currency companies.
Many believe that Coinbase could be valued at up to $100 billion, a huge number for the cryptocurrency sector. However, it is more important to continue to expand the number of people investing in digital currencies globally.