Coinbase goes public with a pop

FOR CRYPTOCURRENCY purists the much-awaited listing of Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, on April 14th must have been a disappointment. It started trading on a boring, conventional stock exchange, and not—as might befit one of the world’s biggest crypto firms—on a buzzy blockchain, as the technology that powers the likes of bitcoin is called.

Yet investors in Coinbase had nothing to complain about. The firm’s initial valuation was nearly $100bn, putting it in the same league as Facebook, a social-media giant, which was valued at $104bn when it listed in 2012. Coinbase’s first-quarter results, released on April 6th, no doubt helped generate excitement. It provisionally estimated a profit of $730m-800m on revenue of about $1.8bn, up from $179m and $585m, respectively, in the last three months of 2020.