Coinbase is going public today in NASDAQ’s first IPO Direct Listing and it’s expected to be large.
Coinbase is going public today on the NASDAQ in an IPO estimated to be valued at $100 Billion or more. Coinbase is the latest Silicon Valley “unicorn”, defined as a market value of $1 Billion or more. Coinbase, which will trade under the symbol [COIN], is a cryptocurrency market exchange and trading platform, providing a well-financed (and hopefully secure) platform for the trading of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin [BTC] that rose to a new high yesterday, surpassing the $62,000 level.
In 2020, Coinbase reportedly had revenues of $1.3 Billion and net income of $322.3 Million. Bitcoin and other lesser known cryptocurrencies, sometimes called “altcoins”, have been reluctantly accepted recently as a new asset class by traditional financial experts and institutional buyers.
Previously, investors could invest in crytpocurrencies on the stock market through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust [GBTC]. According to Decrypt, link here: (https://decrypt.co/resources/gbtc-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-grayscale-bitcoin-trust), Graystone holds 654,885 Bitcoins, valued at over $41 Billion at today’s BTC price of almost $63,000. Graystone has other “single-asset” trusts specializing in other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum [ETH], Litecoin [LTC], Stellar Lumens [XLM].
Coinbase claims to have over 43 million users in over 100 countries and supports trading on over 50 cryptocurrency products and provides its retail customers with a secure “digital wallet” to store their various crypto purchases.
With a combined market asset value of over $2 Trillion dollars (including $1.2 Trillion for Bitcoin alone), the burgeoning cryptocurrency “asset class” has surpassed Microsoft to become the third largest asset class behind Gold ($11 Trillion) and Apple [AAPL] at $2.2 Trillion.
Investors have long looked at gold as a tradition safe store of value to hedge against inflation and future uncertainty, but it appears that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are growing as an alternative for younger and more technology-savvy investors.
