Bitcoin Forum

Coinbase has filled the paperwork to become a publicly traded company. Contrary to other exchanges, that operate with a certain secrecy even "in the dark", Coinbase had followed a compliance strategy focused on gaining the trust of the traditional finance world that allows the company to now file to go public. This paves the way further for the institutional money to enter the BTC world.

Edited to add link  (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/25/business/coinbase-ipo/index.html)as per some user´s request.

Coinbase has been planning for it since last year. But they couldn't do it due to Covid-19 situation. But finally they have done it! It's a big news for the crypto market because coinbase is a company built around cryptocurrency that is going public. Probably it will attract more institutional interest around crypto, but that time will tell!

But I am happy because Coinbase can set an example to the world that cryptocurrency is a serious business and certainly not a threat to the economy.

Interesting news. and more interesting part is SEC allowing it to do the same. Moreover I see this as an indirect crypto investment. The retailers who can't buy cryptocurrencies can easilly buy Coinbase share now as the major operations of Coinbase is just as a crypto exchange and nothing else. Moreover an interesting thing to see would be the reponse it gets in the market. The markets are in sort of a bullish phase so I expect a huge subscription to the IPO. The current valuation of coinbase has been around $100Billion & being an emerging company which is showing profits too this is a good investment for any retail investor.

This news in the eyes of institutional investors is another reason to get involved
in Bitcoin and crypto.

Because the SEC has given Coinbase a green light for this the stigma which some
financial institutions put on Bitcoin is slowly being removed and this is another
step.

We are certainly going to see more and more investment, this move helps.

What's interesting is that

a) They are not conducting a IPO and
b) They have no physical HQ address on their prospectus.

Essentially, this is a direct listing that will allow the owners (Armstrong and co.) to sell their shares probably at exorbitant valuations. With crypto exchanges being one of the easier financial markets for new businesses to penetrate with very low entry barriers compared to traditional high finance, it would be a risky equity issue to hold for the long run imho.

Being them going public, they should also upgrade the customer service and experience that many have been complaining about.

Yes, this is what we can extract from this news. Exposure, institutions, and even normal folks that still doubt bitcoin.

Maybe they don't need to hold IPO anymore because they have more than enough funds.
About having physical HQ, I think you have read this blog from coinbase.

https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-is-a-decentralized-company-with-no-headquarters-a9762c02546

It is too early to speculate on how they will do things here.
But yes, that's a valid point that somehow, it may possibly happen in the future.

This is the only way to completely work under most government's noses without being subjected to banning. I do not know if such filling will give rise to newer problems and issues yet to be experienced when it is still a decentralized exchange but the benefits are there. Kinda weird that they did not set up a physical address or HQ of some sorts.

I don't any more than I see buying Amazon stock as indirectly investing in Nike (or anything they sell).

It is indeed interesting news, however--and I'm taking OP at his word that it's true since I haven't verified it.  I don't think there are any other publicly-traded exchanges of any type, or at least I can't think of any.  As far as whether their stock is worth investing in, it depends on how profitable they are.  I've never seen any reports about that (not surprising since they never had to file any such reports), but I bet they make a pretty decent chunk of change unless they somehow have a lot of overhead.  

This will definitely be a stock that I'll put on my watch list once they finally get listed.  Betcha there'll be a ton of buying on IPO day.

No?  I thought when you get listed on a stock exchange, the initial stock sold to the public is the IPO.

This is a wonderful news from coinbase exchange but I can never trust the exchange because they are use to centralized operation and usually folow the rules and regualtion of the US SEC. Besides, I even read an article last year about the numerous of their staff that quit working for them was due to racism.
Having  said that, @paxmao please provide the link the new next time for more insight.

That's interesting and yet another big step towards Bitcoin adoption. I wonder what impact will it have on public awareness towards cryptocurrencies. Also, it's interesting how will the pricing committee determine the stock price, considering the volatility of both cryptocurrency prices, fees, and trading activity, what will the final valuation be?

It's not just institutional investors that they will attract. There's also a possibility that it will spark confidence to other smaller investors too. The fact that SEC is actually acknowledging this means that they are willing to adopt cryptocurrency. Would be cool if you post the article link though.

If they are centralized now then you can finally trust them because that means that they everything that they do is already insured and any dealings are almost public so you don't have to worry. I think that it is a good compromise that they are registering in SEC because they can be on the good side of the government and they can grow their company because they can be bought in stocks.

Indeed, as they wanted to gain credibility. Then most probably, solve first the problems facing users with their system and services. While these public trading file action will still benefit the company and will get the interest of some investors, they should also face the deep responsbility and possible risks of filing it in NASDAQ. But then again they are confidently ready then, this could be a major move for coinbase.

Hopefully this direct listing make a good outcome as theyve jumped to use traditional IPO and will got this huge step further.

It's very good news, to hear about coinbase going out public will surely going to help boost crypto and attract investors from a new level, and now that Bitcoin has broken all ATH, only bright future awaits for Bitcoin and crypto while all negative thoughts on them are slowly getting eradicated, and I also think, Biden administration is very pro-crypto so that will also help in the development of similar companies in US and make an influence in favor of crypto around the world :)

Coinbase will represent the cryptocurrency market in traditional markets. Nice move, great step. Before that, there was less institutional money in crypto, but now it will increase as you said.

Coinbase has its fair share of negative reviews just like any other company out there, but discrediting it just because it is a centralized entity is silly in my opinion. Would you discredit Xrp too due to its centralized nature?

Despite all the negative reviews, Coinbase has helped improve cryptocurrency adoption in a big way and SEC approving them in this manner helps improve the popularity of cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, LTC etc in the long-term.

This is why I believe that Coinbase going public in this manner is great news overall. Also, the below link is what you are looking for.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/21722972/coinbase-black-racial-discrimination-new-york-times

Not exactly. It seems like they're doing a direct listing instead. Here's an article about the difference:

https://www.investopedia.com/investing/difference-between-ipo-and-direct-listing/

I can't really say why they chose to go this route, but the same article cited Spotify doing the same thing, for these reasons:


But yeah, with all that's going on it seems like crypto is on a trajectory of going legit. I'm a bit scared that this might mean more regulations down the line but I suppose it's nearly impossible to interfere with how Bitcoin actually works anyway, so maybe it's not going to be a big deal.

New regulation is inevitable as we move forward: common and shared standards globally are to be found in order to be playing all the same rules. Since bitcoin is borderless I wish good luck to them with the task, but specific regulation is already approaching. Bitcoin's not garage nerd money anymore

Any ideas if some crypto exchanges will follow Coinbase? Or some exchanges may become bullish about this? We all know that some crypto exchanges these days got their own tokens, which have different uses or benefits if you hold them within their respective platform.
And addition to the Coinbase filing, could be a disaster for Bitcoin or the whole crypto sphere once Coinbase will be rejected?

Not that I'm aware of, Coinbase is testing new ground here and if it is successful then maybe others will follow as well. Of course, the timing is right, we are in a bullish phase and this could really be great for Coinbase and the ecosystem as a whole. I doubt though that it will have a negative impact to crypto sphere if ever this will be rejected. Again, it boils down to the timing of the filing of Coinbase.

I read it in a couple of outlets. (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/25/business/coinbase-ipo/index.html)

I think that, strategically, Coinbase is making a move towards a) assuring the big investment firms that they are a serious and fully compliant company and b) protecting themselves, in the sense that it is much more difficult to ban or act against a company once some large investors have a stake on it.

In terms of profitability, Coinbase business revenue is based on fees for trading, thus they intend to catch the tailwinds of a progressive increase in criptocurrency trading during the next few years. People should understand this if they intend to invest: You are NOT buying a bitcoin derivative, but a derivate of the volume of bitcoin (and other) trading.

Now that I think about it, it could even be a hedge against a unlikely takeover of bitcoin´s dominance by some other crypto asset.

They have effective filled to conduct their IPO, date to be set.

I believe it is not going to be "that" difficult, after all if they can do this and there is no problem with SEC that means others can follow very easily. Of course this is for USA and other american companies can follow but exchanges from other nations can't follow that since they are not in USA.

However I feel like this could basically be a way for Binance to ditch every other place and come to USA and slowly change everything they have to USA thing and go public because I believe they are 10x bigger than coinbase and that means they could make tens of billions of dollars from this and that would be awesome for CZ as well. Not that they need money but who could say no to even more money.

To be fair, they have been planning to go public for over a year now, and we all know that Coinbase's best interest isn't really for the whole of the community but rather for themselves. They are a platform that does strict business, nothing more. Also, doing this right now pleases most of the regulators, especially that Biden's administration is full of pro-regulation for bitcoin, and some of the lot are against it. Coinbase are intentionally letting themselves be regulated in order to gain more support, more money inflow from investors and more profits on their side. This, IMO, is not a move that benefits the community in a large way, but a move that does move legitimacy closer to crypto exchanges somewhat.

I hope that it will come eventually as they need to have a good reputation and feed back from the people. Such complaints that will be voiced out won't really make them fall or such but it's a concern for most of their users that we've been seeing. They got bigger volume this time and it's a challenge for them to provide the best quality customer service that everyone deserves. But as said, they have to put that into their to-do list if they want to be more credible.

Very fucking interesting. Wonder what they have rolled up in their sleeves following this IPO. Coinbase is going to ridiculed by regulations more than ever, yet it is somehow more reliable to the common John Doe. I hate that Coinbase is the one that the general public loves, but as a crypto-enthusiast of sorts myself: we can do better than Coinbase.

My never-ending disappointment towards exchanges never seem to end; maybe one day- an ultimate non-KYC/decentralized exchange with p2p and good UI will take over us. Alas one can fucking hope.

Trusting in a centralized cryptocurrency platform is just like trusting the government (which have failed us on several occasions which led to Satoshi creating Bitcoin to liberation people economic and financially) we may somehow cause negative consequences to crypto if we don't care about decentralization.
The last time i checked, no exchange is totally insured.


Discreting the exchange in subject (coinbase) will only be silly if they didn't withheld users funds and force KYC for no explanation which proves the abuse of power and all this happen because they are centralized.
Would I discredit XRP? Yes and I never for once invest or have a single XRP.

Coin base only improve crypto currency through their startup project investment and if we're to mention exchange site that improves the adoption of crypto then it will be Binance and Kraken.
I don't think you notice that the coin base CEO somehow fear the US SEC and he can do anything to please them even if it hurting his exchange users affection.

Coinbase will follow the same route that Circle has followed... they "hook" loads of Bitcoin customers and then they switch business models and they become some other government controlled entity like Circle. (Fiat Bank)

We know Coinbase has always been profit driven from the start and customers has always come second. They actually pissed on Bitcoin's Pseudo anonymity from day one. (They tell you.. the customer ....with their ToS ...how you can spend your bitcoins... if you use them.)

                                                               ((Not your keys not your bitcoins))  

I think they would need to decide. There are three ways to go public that I know of: IPO, direct listing o SPAC.


Not for institutions. Not your keys, but yes my insurance contract and cold storage agreement = my bitcoins.