Nasdaq gave Coinbase a benchmark price of $ 250 per share on Wednesday ahead of the planned direct listing, which would estimate the cryptocurrency exchange at about $ 65.3 billion on a fully diluted basis.
Coinbase will become the first major cryptocurrency business to go public in the United States, and if it reaches a $ 100 billion market cap, it will instantly be one of the country’s 85 valuable companies. The value of the company has increased in the last year, along with bitcoin and ethereum, the main currencies traded on the site.
Coinbase has chosen the path of direct listing to the public market, rather than pursuing a traditional IPO. This means that instead of raising money by selling new shares to a group of institutional investors, Coinbase allows existing stakeholders to start selling immediately at a market-based price.
The reference price offered by Nasdaq reflects recent private market transactions and the contributions of investment bankers, but does not indicate where the shares will be opened. This is the first major Nasdaq direct list. In the five significant direct listings that took place on the New York Stock Exchange – Spotify, Slack, Palantir, Asana and Roblox – the opening price was on average about 37% above the reference price.
Coinbase said last week, announcing preliminary results for the first quarter, that revenue for this period had risen ninefold to $ 1.8 billion, and net income rose between $ 730 million and $ 800 million from $ 32 million. dollars a year earlier. The vast majority of transactions on Coinbase involve the purchase of bitcoin and ethereum, which have had a historic tear, rising over 800% and 1,300%, respectively, in the last year.
Bitcoin and ethereum in the last year
CNBC
For the full year of 2020, revenue doubled to $ 1.28 billion, and the company went from a loss in 2019 to a profit of $ 322.3 million.
Coinbase has drawn up a plan to be at the heart of an emerging “cryptoeconomy”, in which financial transactions and online markets will largely move to the blockchain, offering investors a wide range of digital currencies to buy and trade. But the company acknowledged that the short-term growth will be dictated primarily by the price and volume of bitcoin transactions.
CLOCK: Crypto strategist on how the debut of Coinbase validates cryptocurrencies