The cryptocurrency (Bitcoin Cs) trading platform Coinbase will become the first cryptocurrency company to list its shares on Wall Street. Coinbase will be registered with a COIN code.
The estimated IPO value still varies depending on the method of calculation. But the company’s capitalization is about $70 million to $100 million. This will be one of the biggest IPO since Facebook’s IPO in 2012.
Coinbase opts for direct listing, which doesn’t allow it to raise new funds. But offers current shareholders, founders, employees, and historical investors the opportunity to sell their shares on the market.
Spotify, Slack, Palantir and Roblox have also used this method for their Wall Street debuts. Nearly 115 million Coinbase shares will be placed on the market. Their reference prices will be announced late Tuesday.
Coinbase History
Founded in 2012 in San Francisco by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, this platform allows users to buy and sell around 50 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether.
Coinbase claims 56 million total users and a little over six million people make transactions every month. These results are from the first quarter, which released in early April.
The company has benefited from bitcoin’s meteoric rise over the past year, with crypto asset prices rising from US $ 6,500 last April to more than US $ 61,000 in mid-March 2021.
Quoting from Reuters, after cryptocurrencies came to power, other virtual currencies such as ether, Litecoin or Stellar Lumens have also surged.
“With bitcoin having more than doubled in the last six months and cryptocurrency becoming more popular with more mainstream investors, it can certainly that crypto has become more mainstream in the last 12 months,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.
As a result of the cryptocurrency boom, Coinbase’s revenue has increased nearly tenfold in a year to US $ 1.8 billion in the first quarter. Profits increased 25 times, in the range of $730 to $800 million.
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