After months of speculation, San Francisco-based crypto exchange Coinbase recently announced plans to go public via a direct listing.
Now, The Block reports that the company will list its shares on Nasdaq. (Coinbase did not confirm the report.)
Coinbase quietly filed a draft of its registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) back in December, and the direct listing was officially announced last week. Unlike an IPO, a direct listing doesn’t involve creating new shares.
The Block also reported that Coinbase has launched a secondary market for private shares with Nasdaq’s Private Market service, which has already implied a valuation of around $50 billion.
Under the aegis of CEO Brian Armstrong, Coinbase has grown into one of the most dominant crypto companies in the world—it’s already raised over $500 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain.
In addition to its retail brokerage, Coinbase also offers institutional services; the deals it coordinated with the software company MicroStrategy last year may have contributed to a surge in the price of Bitcoin.
Coinbase is the first crypto exchange to go public in the US.