A Closer Look at the Upcoming Coinbase IPO

On Thursday (December 17), Coinbase Global, Inc. signalled its intention to conduct a registered public offering by announcing that it had filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Here is what Coinbase said in its brief blog post:

“Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the ‘SEC’). The Form S-1 is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.”

This means that Coinbase wants to go public, i.e. conduct its initial public offering (IPO) by selling shares of its stock to the public.

Before companies can start offering securities to the public, the SEC requires that they “disclose important financial information through the registration of securities,” which means that they must file a registration statement, and they are unable to sell the securities mentioned in the registration statement until the SEC staff says that the registration statement has become “effective.”

According to the SEC, here are some examples of information that a company needs to provide in the registration forms it files with the SEC:

• “A description of the company’s properties and business”
• “A description of the security to be offered for sale”
• “Information about the management of the company”
• “Financial statements certified by independent accountants”

Earlier today, Mira Christanto, Asia Advisor at Messari, said in a Twitter thread that Messari’s analysis of Coinbase’s business values the company at $28 billion:

Larry Cermak, Director of Research at The Block, made the interesting observation that “the same day Coinbase filed confidential S-1 ahead of IPO, Coinbase also had the second highest daily volume in existence.”

Ryan Watkins, Senior Research Analyst at Messari, explained why he believes that the upcoming Coinbase IPO “will draw an incredible amount of interest.”

And Barry Silbert, Founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), believes that Coinbase’s IPO will increase the valuations of quite a few other crypto companies.