Coinbase First Employee Says Exchange Should’ve Gone Public Via ETH

Coinbase first employee Olaf Carlson said that the exchange should’ve gone public via Ethereum as the stocks of the exchange dropped ever since it went public as we can see in our Coinbase stock news today.

Olaf Carlson, the coinbase first employee said that the exchange would be valued at over double what it is if the company went public on Ethereum. His ideal scenario for the shares would have been USDC-Style ERC-20 tokens traded on Defi as the shares trade for $263 each. Carlson is the first hire at the exchange and said that the shares of Coinbase would be worth more today if the company had chosen a crypto-native way of going public:

“I think that if Coinbase would have gone public on Coinbase [it] would be valued at over double what it is.”

Coinbase went public on April 14 with a direct listing on Nasdaq and now the CEO of Polychain Capital elaborated why he thinks going through ethereum was a better choice. He had in mind a USDCstyle model where the company’s shares would be represented as ERC-20 tokens allowing for trading in the “wild and wonderful world” of DeFi. Coinbase’s way of going public was not mainstream as it chose a direct listing on the Nasdaq instead of common routes via IPOs. Direct listings are less cumbersome than the IPOs are because they require less paperwork and they are cheaper.

Coinbase didn’t create new shares as would be the case with the initial public offering but offered up 115 million existing shares. The exchange was rumored to be worth $100 billion and the shares expected to trade at $375 each but some analysts found it to be off the mark. Coinbase debuted on the Nasdaq platform under the ticker COIN at $381 per share but then peaked at $424 before plummeting to $310 and ended its first day at $328 per share which was 31% higher than the reference price.

Last year we saw Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong imposing a new apolitical vision for his company’s culture and future. The move was heavily criticized at that time which led to many employees quitting. The CLO of Coinbase Paul Grewal however, said that the mandate was a success and that Coinbase’s no politics policy proves to be efficient.