Coinbase says SEC has agreed to dismiss case against it, pending commission approval

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The Road to a Nasdaq Listing

At Wednesday’s closing price, his 39.6 million shares are worth just under $13 billion. Many market observers predicted the stock would rise sharply from its $250 reference price because the company is already profitable, has rapidly rising sales and a growing number of customers. The shares opened at $381 and quickly shot up as high as $429.54, before dropping back below the debut price and reaching a low of around $310. The price was still well above the reference price of $250 set Tuesday night, though no shares changed hands at that price.

Coinbase’s latest valuation may come as no surprise with the price of Bitcoin skyrocketing to a record $50,000 on Wednesday, a 66% increase from the start of 2021. The company, which plans to go public in a matter of weeks, filed a confidential S-1 for a direct listing in December. While exact share prices are still only a topic for speculation, around 254 million shares will be available to trade. Bernstein initiated coverage of the crypto exchange with an outperform rating and a $310 price target.

What The Market Is Telling Us

Crypto stocks have remained on edge in the past few weeks as Bitcoin and other altcoins have pulled back. Bitcoin price has retreated by over 10% from its all-time high, triggering a bigger sell-off o… In February, twenty-three new analysts joined Seeking Alpha, offering diverse stock picks and insights, from biotech to automotive and energy sectors. COIN analyst views the stock as a balanced risk/reward opportunity for investors and long-term growth winner in the cryptocurrency sector. According to 20 analysts, the average rating for COIN stock is “Buy.” The 12-month stock price forecast is $302.25, which is an increase of 55.80% from the latest price.

News

The crypto industry spent heavily to help elect Trump and other crypto-friendly lawmakers and is eager to cement its influence in politics and mainstream financial systems. Coinbase is down 21% since the beginning of the year, and at $203.09 per share, it is trading 40.9% below its 52-week high of $343.62 from December 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Coinbase’s shares at the IPO in April 2021 would now be looking at an investment worth $618.65. Coinbase’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 69 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business. That’s a bit of a relief, which likely gave businesses and analysts some space to rethink their outlooks.

Financial Performance

In its complaint, the SEC said Coinbase made billions acting as the middle man for cryptocurrency buyers and sellers but did not give investors lawful protections while acting as a broker. Shares xcritical website rose 3% at the opening bell Friday, though the decision, not confirmed by the SEC, would not be unexpected. The Trump administration has projected a much more lenient stance on cryptocurrency markets.

Coinbase was founded by former Airbnb engineer Brian Armstrong and former Goldman Sachs trader Fred Ehrsam in 2012, back when Bitcoin was valued around $15. The founders went through Y Combinator’s summer 2012 program, and soon raised a $5 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures. Coinbase was quickly seen as one of the more legitimate platforms to buy and sell crypto, and was even called “one of the places that looked less sketchy” by a TechCrunch editor back in 2013.

• The figure would be $99 billion using the fully diluted share count of 261.3 million.
• Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain and the second-biggest overall, also rose to a record price of around $2,400.
• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on SEC dismissing litigation and stock rallying on the news.
• Shares of Coinbase are listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker “COIN,” and closed at $328.28, up 31% from the $250 reference price set by Nasdaq ahead of the first trade.
• However, the company’s partnership with leading investment banks suggests it is well-prepared for these challenges.

In its pursuit of a successful IPO, eToro has enlisted some of the world’s most prestigious investment banks. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, UBS, and Citigroup are serving as the lead managing bookmakers, indicating strong institutional interest in the platform’s public debut. The announcement, made on March 24, marks another effort by eToro to enter the U.S. public market after several previous attempts. The company’s prior attempt to go public through a merger with Fintech Acquisition Corp V, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), was canceled in mid-2022 due to unfavorable market conditions. That proposed merger, announced in 2021, had valued eToro at approximately $10.4 billion.

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, is currently valued at $77 billion, according to the Nasdaq Private Market, where shares in the company have been privately traded at $303 a piece. That valuation makes Coinbase worth more than ICE, the $63 billion market cap company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. Separately, stocks linked to digital assets rose as sentiment in the crypto space picked up, mirroring the improved appetite for risk assets. Notably, Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, edged close to the $90,000 mark after falling as low as $79,000 earlier in the month.

Coinbase, now valued at $85 billion, has gone public. Here’s what you need to know.

For context, Ripple was the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap when this news hit. That’s big because it means a lot of traders and investors likely have exposure to it. When a major token like this gets regulatory relief, it can https://xcritical.pro/ reinforce positive sentiment in the broader crypto market. Instead of using a traditional IPO, Coinbase went public through a public listing. That means it avoided the typical agreements with big banks that would buy thousands of shares and promote them.

Coinbase closed its first day of trading at a price of $328.28 per share, making its valuation a whopping $85.78 billion and putting the company on the list of 100 most valuable companies in the US. The exchange reported $1.8 billion in revenue for the quarter (versus $1.27 billion for the full year 2020). Coinbase gave no revenue guidance (as a publicly traded company normally would), but instead gave scenarios for user growth depending on different outcomes in the crypto market. It reported 6.1 million active users in the first quarter, more than double the number during the final quarter of 2020. As eToro moves closer to its goal of becoming a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq, the world will be watching how the trading platform’s IPO unfolds. A successful listing could pave the way for further expansion in the U.S. market, solidifying eToro’s status as a major fintech player in the increasingly competitive industry of online trading platforms.

In fact, Tesla’s recent $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase was executed by Coinbase. Coinbase’s direct listing could come as Bitcoin, and the company’s valuation, hit record highs. Cryptocurrency-friendly trading platform eToro has filed for a US IPO, aiming for a potential $5 billion valuation as it seeks to expand its investor base on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

With a well-established reputation as a fintech innovator, eToro is positioning itself to capitalize on the American market’s deep liquidity and broad investor awareness. Coinbase, the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, went live with its direct listing on Nasdaq, on a day when bitcoin rallied to a fresh all-time high. Founded in 2012 as a way to simplify the purchase of bitcoin, Coinbase has emerged as the most popular crypto exchange in the U.S. and soared in value alongside digital currencies bitcoin and ethereum. The service now has 56 million users, up from 43 million at the end of 2020 and 32 million the year before that. In its last private financing round in 2018, investors valued Coinbase at $8 billion.

However, the company’s partnership with leading investment banks suggests it xcritical website is well-prepared for these challenges. Coinbase’s prospectus acknowledges the company’s current dependence on transaction fees and asset prices and identifies investing in diversification as a means of growth. U.S.-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global has registered with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), allowing it to offer crypto trading services in the country, the company said … Coinbase stock price has crashed into a bear market this year as the crypto industry remains on edge, with most coins crashing. Prices for bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, soared Wednesday to a new all-time high above $64,000, settling back to about $63,500 as of press time.

Stock Picks From Seeking Alpha’s February 2025 New Analysts

He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master’s in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. Analysts, traders and economists characterized the share sale as a milestone for cryptocurrencies, with the biggest U.S. exchange now getting exposure to mainstream stock-market investors. The event has also been tabbed as a catalyst that might drive adoption of digital assets. Coinbase has enjoyed strong revenue growth and a surge in users over the past 12 months, but the company will likely face challenges in its pursuit of future growth, says PitchBook analyst Robert Le.

By comparison, Robinhood has 13 million users, even after its user spike following the GameStop stonk craze. Although the company hasn’t announced a date to go public yet, it could be in for a successful run — assuming the price of Bitcoin doesn’t dip too low in the meantime. Yet, eToro’s reputation as a user-friendly trading platform and its ongoing efforts to expand its ecosystem could provide it with a competitive edge. CEO Yoni Assia has previously acknowledged the importance of the U.S. market, emphasizing that very few of their global clients trade UK shares.