Coinbase will begin the public trading of its stock on April 14, it said Thursday.
The crypto exchange will also hold a first-quarter earnings call on April 6, providing a financial outlook for 2021, Coinbase said in a press release.
There's been much anticipation about the Nasdaq listing. Prices for the shares are predicted to fall between $300 and $350, valuing the trading platform at about $100 billion. The listing would put Coinbase atop an emerging class of publicly traded firms dealing in bitcoin. Further, a $100 billion debut would make Coinbase more valuable than traditional tech stocks such as Uber.
Based on the average price of $343.58 of shares traded on Nasdaq’s private market last month, CNBC calculated Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s 39.6 million shares will be worth $13.6 billion, catapulting him into the “decabillionaire” rankings alongside the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The price of bitcoin increasing tenfold over the course of the last year has caught the market by surprise, with banks and institutions now scrambling to get a piece of the action.
Investors in Coinbase’s early fundraisings, a close-knit group of Silicon Valley investment firms and early crypto believers, have increased their investments by 100-fold in some cases. The windfall could spread much further, however: The endowment fund of Duke University will be a beneficiary of Coinbase's public listing, CoinDesk reported last week.
Armstrong was paid a salary of $1 million last year, though his total compensation topped $59 million with all his option awards, CNBC also reported.