Cryptocurrency had a banner week in an already big year. Over the past day, the value of Bitcoin has set a new high, and the digital currency exchange Coinbase, the most valuable American cryptocurrency company, announced that it has submitted an initial public offering to the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the DealBook newsletter discusses, there are both practical and philosophical aspects to Coinbase listing.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are decentralized assets without borders, supported especially by libertarians, anarchists and others who reject centralized control and regulation. Coinbase aims to popularize these rebellious currencies through an application that makes it easier for anyone to trade Bitcoin as they would make stocks or bonds. An IPO would push Coinbase – and, by extension, cryptocurrency – further into the mainstream, with regulators, bankers and other traps of official legitimacy.
Coinbase is being built “spiritually” for a digital chip offering, Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of the company, told Fortune. But for all the bullishness about Bitcoin at the moment, exploiting traditional sources of institutional funding could be a more profitable way, with fewer regulatory uncertainties.
The traditional IPO subscription process could also be full. The misinterpretation of retail demand on Airbnb and DoorDash’s market debuts has prompted other IPOs to rethink their plans. Adding crypto-true believers to this mix only increases the difficulty. This could make direct listing more appropriate, from a cost-effectiveness perspective, as previous reports have suggested. (Slack and Spotify have become public in this way, in which the shares are sold directly to the public, bypassing intermediaries.)
Coinbase was last valued at $ 8 billion in a round of financing in 2018, but may be more valuable now, due to rising cryptocurrency prices and the frenzy of technology stocks. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, recently addressed the rapid rise in the price of Bitcoin on the company’s blog:
“While it’s great to see market rallies and news organizations focusing on this emerging asset class in a new way, we can’t stress enough how important it is to understand that investing in cryptography isn’t risk-free.
No matter what stock investors think Coinbase is worth as it prepares to list, crypto investors are convinced that Bitcoin’s long-term prospects are bright. “It’s definitely gold 2.0,” said Daniel Polotsky of CoinFlip, a Bitcoin ATM company. “He’s going to eat the golden lunch.”
For larger dining chains, the ever-changing mix of rules around the table poses a special logistical challenge: How do you come up with a company-wide approach when different locations handle your own specific regulations?
New indoor and outdoor dining restrictions have been introduced, although they are far from uniform (no indoor dining in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York, indoor dining nests in New Jersey and Massachusetts, no restaurants in throughout California).
Restaurants need to work with local health departments to provide specific instructions on what to do to prevent the virus from spreading. Some require outdoor tents or structures that have no more than two walls to ensure adequate ventilation. Others want three sides of the tents to remain open.
Left with empty dining rooms, casual and luxury dining chains have moved quickly to improve or offer doubling options for the first time. They started boarding and signed with food delivery partners such as DoorDash and Grubhub. Some states have weakened alcohol laws, allowing chains to offer alcoholic beverages for consumption. And when restaurants were allowed to serve meals again, with restrictions, many rented tents or opened terraces to create outdoor chairs.
But the chains have seen uneven performance among their restaurants.
By the end of the summer, Olive Garden restaurants had an average of $ 70,000 in sales per week. But sales at New York’s Times Square chain superstar restaurant, which only offered food during the summer, fell to $ 17,500 a week, down from about $ 288,000 a week, according to Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden. , LongHorn Steakhouse and The Capital Grille, told Wall Street analysts in September.