(Wall Street, New York) Coinbase is asking the public to help it acquire hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of fiat currency in USD today. The bold move comes via a direct listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange and just as Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies have experienced a wave of enormous interest and all-time-high prices.
Many thought Coinbase would choose to avoid an IPO or direct listing, given popular and pervading views on the future of money within the cryptocurrency community. But it appears that fiat currency and lots of it is what Coinbase needs at the moment. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, had this to say about the direct listing:
“We literally have no money whatsoever. Bitcoin, we have tons of. Absolute mountains of it sitting on a USB drive somewhere in the office. We really thought the US dollar would be defunct by now, but we’re clearly off by a few years and we really need the cash to keep things running. We’re hoping this direct listing will help us get some money so we can pay people, even if it has to be in a currency that we're told to believe has value.”