Coinbase, Readying for Public Listing, Gets $77B Assessment From Nasdaq Private Market

Coinbase, Preparing for Public Listing, Gets $77B Assessment From Nasdaq Private Market

Last week's settlement rate of $303 per share would make Coinbase larger than NYSE-owner ICE.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, which is preparing to trade publicly in the next few months, is being valued at $77 billion, based on trading of the company's privately held shares on a secondary market.

Those shares in the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. are changing hands on the Nasdaq Private Market at $303 a piece, according to two people with knowledge of the auction. That indicates a total business value of about $77 billion-- greater than Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

" The third weekly deal closed on Friday and the cleaning cost was $303 a share," said a source. "The very first week it was 200 bucks a share, the 2nd week it was $301 a share, and the third week it was $303 a share. So you can type of see price discovery taking place."

Coinbase declined to comment.

Read more: Coinbase to End Up Being Publicly Traded, Announces Proposed Direct Listing of Shares
The Coinbase private market is running a confidential order book ahead of the business's direct public listing, a date for which is still unidentified. The sale allows former and existing staff members, along with financiers in Coinbase, to take some money off the table. Around 254 million shares in Coinbase will be readily available and outstanding to trade when the company goes public, according to sources with knowledge of the offering.

Coinbase pre-IPO futures agreements were trading on crypto derivatives exchange FTX at about $386 at the time of writing.

Coinbase goes huge

Wishes for Coinbase's public listing are riding high within the crypto neighborhood, especially as the price of bitcoin (BTC, +0.89%) continues to reach above $50,000. (More will be revealed about Coinbase's financial resources when the personal S-1 it filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is made public in the coming weeks.).

Countering such terrific expectations is the argument that the valuation of 100% of a business could be really various than the evaluation of half a percent of its shares.

The secondary selling of shares sponsored by Coinbase over the past three weeks has actually seen "significant amounts" change hands, according to a source.

" It's not like a handful of shares being exchanged at $300 a share. Each week it's 10s of millions of dollars, a quite sizable quantity," stated the source.