By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 15th, 2024
Interestingly, Coinbase co-founder and board member Fred Ehrsam is a former trader at Goldman Sachs.
The Coinbase exchange announced on Thursday that it had filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A report by Business Insider asserts that Coinbase has reached out to Goldman Sachs in hopes that the bank will lead its initial public offering.
This news comes a day after the exchange announced that it had filed a ‘draft registration statement on Form S-1’ with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Messari Inc, a cryptocurrency analytics firm, estimates that the company could have a value of $28 billion following its IPO. Coinbase currently has a trading volume of over $320 billion with more than 35 million users. Although there have been reports of the company’s intent to go public from as far back as July, the filing was only done this week.
Interestingly, Coinbase co-founder and board member Fred Ehrsam is a former trader at Goldman Sachs. Ehrsam worked at the bank from 2010 to 2012 before leaving to create Coinbase with CEO Brian Armstrong.
Established in 2012, the exchange has gone on to become the biggest US crypto firm and a staple for crypto-newbies. The company has pulled in billions of US dollars in recent months due to institutional investment and a more favourable public perception of crypto. The latter has been associated with Bitcoin’s recent bullish swing.
Coin valuations, in general, are at their highest since 2018. This makes it a favourable time for the exchange to go public.
Goldman Sachs has recently joined other financial institutions in reversing their previously bearish stance on digital assets. The bank on August 6 appointed Mathew McDermott to the role of Global Head of Digital Assets. In a complete change from May’s report that stated that cryptocurrencies were “not an asset class”, Goldman on Friday stated that gold and bitcoin can “co-exist”. It even went as far as admitting that although bitcoin poses no real threat to ‘gold’s status as the currency of last resort, there is some substitution occurring’.
Coinbase has not provided any information on engaging Goldman Sachs as yet.