Bitcoin record, Coinbase makes its Nasdaq debut at the perfect moment

today Bitcoin broke another all-time record and already cost $ 64, or almost 720. PLN. You can already pay with cryptocurrency cards in stores, a Tesla sells its cars for BTC and invests financial surpluses in cryptocurrency. It was hard to imagine a better day for the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange debut on the US Nasdaq exchange.

Coinbase will debut on the Nasdaq today, but for obvious geographical reasons, trading starts there in the afternoon of our time. However, experts have no doubts that it will be a successful debut. This is supported not only by the positive sentiment on the market, an increasingly better attitude to cryptocurrencies, but also by the condition and development plans of the Coinbase exchange itself. 

CHECK: Cryptocurrency exchanges - List of popular offers

USD 800 million profit for the quarter

Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, Coinbase.

Coinbase is one of the largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. It is growing faster than the cryptocurrency market and within a few years it has become one of the world leaders. It all started in 2012, when Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam in San Francisco launched a small stock exchange that quickly gained immense popularity. After two years, 50 people worked in it, and after expansion outside the USA (mainly Europe), Coinbase became recognizable not only in the then narrow blockchain industry, but also in broadly understood business.

Today it is at the absolute top of several top stock exchanges, which is undoubtedly confirmed by its financial results. In the last quarter of 2020, Coinbase earned approximately USD 800 million. This is more than four times more than in the fourth quarter of 2019, although that profit of USD 190 million can undoubtedly also be considered impressive. 

In the prospectus, we read, inter alia, that the company currently has about 43 million active users, with $ 90 billion in their wallets.

4 thousand cryptocurrencies to choose from

For many people who are not familiar with the cryptocurrency market, the Coinbase offer, or rather its width, may be a shock. The stock exchange earns on commissions for the exchange of tokens and has over 4 thousand of them in the listing.which is "only" a small part of the cryptocurrencies that are already on the market. The less popular the token, the greater the spread, and thus the exchange's profit from each transaction. The smallest is of course on the most popular cryptocurrencies: BTC and ETH.

But Coinbase is not just an exchange a long time ago. They are becoming more and more popular cryptocurrency cards. They work just like bank payment cards, but use the holder's crypto wallet. You can pay with them at all points, because the system itself converts the current value of the cryptocurrency into American dollars. 

Cryptocurrency market prospects

The basic question for an investor who has not bought Coinbase shares in a public offering, however, is whether it is worth investing in these shares after their debut. Of course, in such cases, the answer is always the current price, but it's also worth taking a closer look at the prospects. And these seem tempting, especially when we look at the broad development of the stock market Coinbase projects.

One of them is even payment platform for online storesthat increasingly accept cryptocurrency payments. And not only giants, such as the aforementioned Tesla, or even PayPal, but also smaller online stores from around the world are thinking about it. The development potential is therefore huge. 

Coinbase owners will become billionaires

How much is the Coinbase exchange worth? This will be assessed by the market and the laws of supply and demand, but we can know some of the answers before the debut. The company is a joint stock company (with shares so far private). The last issue took place in 2018, when the value of the group was set at USD 8 billion. USD 300 million was raised from the issue of shares. 

Since then, the company's profits have increased several times, and experts argue that Coinbase may be worth up to USD 100 billion. Interestingly, there are no new shares on the stock exchange, but only some of those owned by the current owners. Thanks to this, they will gain a property valuation and will quickly be able to see their names on the list of the richest people in the world.