Coinbase IPO with great start but misses support
The long awaited crypto exchange listing has not been able to gain momentum.

After years of shunning Wall Street and traditional financial markets, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are finally enjoying their moment in the sun. Bitcoin price is currently trading within grasp of its all-time high of $ 64,600, which it hit a few days ago, far from its price of $ 3,000 just a year ago. Bitcoin owes its insane rally to its increasing adoption by Wall Street and some of the largest and most well-known institutions and companies in the world, such as Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), Square Inc. (NYSE: SQ), PayPal Holdings (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA). What makes the looming public listing of the world's largest crypto exchange all the more compelling. The giant cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc. is about to become a public company - a first for a cryptocurrency exchange. Coinbase will list on the tech-heavy NASDAQ platform at an implicit valuation of $ 68 billion, a huge increase from its valuation just a few years ago. But investors who can't wait to do a great deal with Coinbase's listing will have to wait a little longer: On April 14, Coinbase will go public via a direct listing and not via the usual initial public listing (IPO) - Process, taking an example from companies like Palantir (NYSE: PLTR), Spotify (NYSE: SPOT), and Slack (NYSE: WORK). Direct quotes simply mean that early investors and employees get the chance to convert their shares into stocks. No underwriters are involved in direct listings and no new shares are created, only existing, outstanding shares are sold. Scoring any start-up can be quite difficult, but scoring a cryptocurrency exchange like Coinbase is far more difficult, not least because it's the first cryptocurrency exchange to go public. Coinbase is currently valued at $ 100B thanks to Bitcoin's meteoric rise since 2020. Coinbase takes a chunk of every Bitcoin transaction on its platform - 0.46% in Q1 2021. Last year, the company's revenue was 1.28 Billion US dollars, up 139% year over year, with 86% coming from transaction fees. Coinbase also saw impressive bottom line growth, posting a profit of $ 322 million in 2020, compared to a loss of $ 30 million the previous year. The current year is proving to be another banner year for the huge exchange: According to an SEC filing, sales in the first quarter of 2021 were $ 1.8 billion - a massive growth of 906% compared to the previous year. The trading volume of the first quarter of $ 335 billion was even 60% higher than in all of 2020, while the profit of the first quarter of ~ $ 800 million was 250% higher. But that's just one of several factors that work in Coinbase's favor. Hot on the heels of the Coinbase IPO is Bakkt, another crypto exchange that recently announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger. Other unicorn IPOs last year including Airbnb Inc. (NASDAQ: ABNB), the popular online home rental marketplace, and DoorDash Inc. (NYSE: DASH), an on-demand logistics-based startup, were a sure-fire success, with ABNB stock up nearly 160% and DASH up 90% since their respective IPOs.





