Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has confidentially filed to take itself public, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. Coinbase, founded in 2012, submitted a draft registration statement, or S-1, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, to go public. Coinbase has been at the vanguard of those offering retail investors in the U.S. a venue to buy and sell bitcoin and other nascent digital assets. The announcement comes as the company’s CEO Brian Armstrong said that it plans on adding longtime Silicon Valley executive Kelly Kramer to its board of directors, following a long tenure at Cisco Systems Inc.
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The company also boasts Marc Andreessen, co-founder and operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s leading venture capital, as a board member. Reuters in July that it had begun the process of exploring a so-called direct listing. By some estimates, Coinbase has a valuation exceeding $8 billion, as of recent valuations. However, its confidential filing also comes as the platform has seen a number of technical glitches in recent weeks as interest in bitcoins and other digital assets has ramped up. Bitcoin’s price
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on Thursday hit an intraday record high above $23,000, coming about three years after its last high near $20,000 in December of 2017.
