Coinbase Valued at $86 Billion in ‘Landmark Moment’ for Crypto

Shares in Coinbase, the first major cryptocurrency company to list its shares on a U.S.

The stock swung as low as $310 and as high as $429 in a volatile day of trading that reflected the unpredictable nature of cryptocurrency prices.

Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Coinbase allows people and companies to buy and sell various digital currencies, including Bitcoin, the most popular, and Ether.

This week, the price of Bitcoin hit a record $64,000 amid excitement for Coinbase’s listing, double its value at the beginning of this year.

In the first three months of the year, it estimated it made $730 million to $800 million in net profit on $1.8 billion in revenue.

Coinbase has raised more than $500 million from venture capital investors, who last privately valued it at $8 billion.

Some of the company’s former Black and female employees have also spoken out against unfair treatment and were found to have been underpaid in a company report.

Coinbase is the largest company to go public via direct listing, which has become popular among well-funded Silicon Valley start-ups that do not need to raise more cash from public market investors.

Coinbase’s listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange gives traditional investors, who may be interested in digital currencies but are unable or unwilling to buy them directly, an indirect way to buy into the market.

As demand for cryptocurrencies has surged this year, Coinbase has struggled to keep up with the demand.

“Hopefully Coinbase going public and having its direct listing is going to be viewed as kind of a landmark moment for the crypto space,” Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s chief executive, told DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in a CNBC interview.

At $86 billion, Coinbase’s market value exceeds that of the stock exchanges its shares will trade on: Nasdaq’s market cap is $26 billion, while ICE, the parent company of the N.Y.S.E., is valued at $67 billion.

Skeptics think competition will eventually bring Coinbase’s fat margins down, though Mr. Armstrong asserted that he didn’t seen any sign of that happening yet.

Digital currency, once mocked as a tool for criminals and reckless speculators, is sliding into the mainstream.

Her appointment was guided by Peter Rice, the chairman of general entertainment at The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.

CBS News is expected to announce in the coming days a successor for its own president, Susan Zirinsky, who is leaving to take on a producing role at ViacomCBS.

ABC’s “World News Tonight,” anchored by David Muir, is the top-rated evening newscast, averaging 9.4 million viewers for the season.

Likewise, “Good Morning America” on ABC is still the No.

News divisions at ABC and elsewhere are facing a drastically changed news cycle.

More than a decade ago, Grupo Televisa of Mexico and Univision of the United States, giants in the world of Spanish-language media, set aside years of hostility to strike an alliance.

The two have grown closer in recent years, beginning with a licensing deal in 2010.

Together, the two companies dominate the Spanish-language broadcast markets in the United States and Mexico.

The new business, to be called Televisa-Univision, will have an enormous content library — Televisa produced 86,000 hours of programming last year — broadcast and pay-TV channels and stations and a movie studio.

As part of the deal, Univision and Televisa are bringing in $1 billion in new investment to their venture.

Jerome H.

Mr. Powell’s comments come at a time when the Fed has faced increasing criticism from Republicans for its attention to racial equity and climate change, issues central bank officials often say have economic and financial stability implications but which some lawmakers paint as too political for the central bank.

His term expires early next year, so Fed watchers have been attentive to his interactions with the Biden administration as they try to game out whether Mr. Powell wants — or will be tapped for — another term.

For now, his public appearances have remained focused on the path ahead for monetary policy.

Some economists have fretted that inflation might pick up as the Fed takes a patient stance and as the government spends heavily on pandemic relief.

He also suggested that as bond-buying policies draw to a close, they will likely follow a similar path to the one the Fed employed after the financial crisis.

The Office of Recovery Programs will work closely with the White House and Gene Sperling, who was tapped last month to oversee spending related to the recently passed $1.9 trillion relief legislation.

The Treasury Department is overseeing nearly $420 billion in programs from the American Rescue Plan in addition to unspent funds from the relief packages that were created in 2020.

Seeking to rebuild, Toshiba looked for a new leader from outside its own ranks, and in 2018 it appointed Mr. Kurumatani, an executive with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity company based in Europe, as chief executive.

Effissimo Capital Management, a Singapore-based hedge fund that holds about 10 percent of the company and had led the campaign to unseat its management team, subsequently called for an investigation into the outcome.

Earlier this month, Toshiba announced that it had received a buyout offer from CVC Capital Partners for a reported $20 billion, a substantial premium on the company’s share price.

Coinbase, which allows people and companies to buy and sell digital currencies, began publicly trading on Wednesday.

Tesco, the large British grocer, fell 2.2 percent after the company reported a 20 percent decline in pretax profit because of the extra cost of operating stores and warehouses safely during the pandemic.

Its pilot warehouse, north of Cincinnati, is 375,000 square feet, many times the size of a conventional grocery store, and has all the hallmarks of a high-tech fulfillment operation, with automated robots retrieving products for packaging and computers advising humans on the best way to pack a grocery bag, the company said.

The first woman to lead CBS News, Susan Zirinsky, is expected to announce that she is stepping down from the presidency of the network’s news division, possibly as soon as this week, a person with knowledge of the plan said on Tuesday.

Epic Games, the video game developer that produced the hit game Fortnite, said Tuesday that it had raised $1 billion in funding, valuing the company at $28.7 billion.

…Read the full story