Coinbase Officially Filed IPO Paperwork With The SEC: Report

Coinbase officially filed the IPO paperwork with the SEC which means it filed for an initial public offering, confirming the rumors that were going on for months. The IPO caps quite an interesting year for the biggest crypto exchange as we are reading more in our latest coinbase news.

The San Francisco-based crypto exchange Coinbase officially filed IPO paperwork to go public with its initial public offering with the SEC. The exchange made the announcement today in a tweet along with a blog post which stated that it had “submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

We have confidentially submitted our draft registration (Form S1) with the Securities and Exchange Commission. https://t.co/U6d0sVz0aX

— Coinbase (@coinbase) December 17, 2020

Reuters was the first to report that the company was plotting an IPO in 2019 while at that time, Coinbase was in negotiations with investment banks and law companies about getting into the idea but had not yet filed its intentions with the regulator according to the report. It’s still unclear what has changed since July but the announcement came at quite the opportune time when BTC surpassed its 2017 all-time high and traded above $23,000. Meltem Demirors, Coinshares CSO said:

“I believe that this will be a monster IPO and the first of many to come in 2021. This and future IPOs will further enable investors at both an institutional and retail level to get more pure-play exposure to crypto-assets. As an investor in over 250 crypto companies over the last six years, I believe that this will be the first meaningful exit, which means more allocation to crypto companies going forward.”

This year was big for BTC as well as for Coinbase. Crypto analyst Marc Andreesen joined the board back in August and the exchange also brokered a deal for Microstrategy in the initial purchase of millions of dollars worth of BTC which kickstarted the bull run that got more steam over the past few months. Coinbase saw a fair amount of controversy, as well as the CEO Brian Armstrong, wrote a letter to the employees insisting that the politics have to be kept outside of the workplace which caused him to lose about 5% of his workforce.

The New York Times also reported that 15 black employees left the company back in 2018 and 2019 citing they saw a racist company culture which at that time, represented three-quarters of the Black employees at the 600-person company. Coinbase didn’t respond for comments on the IPO yet.