On April 14, shares in Coinbase, the world’s largest crypto exchange, began trading on Nasdaq after a direct listing. On its first day as a public company it set a market capitalization of $86 billion.
That is roughly the same as HSBC and bigger than any European bank: ahead of BNP Paribas at $65 billion, UBS at $57 billion and Santanderat $50 billion.
Credit Suisse, which has been in the news recently and is one of the world’s largest wealth managers with $1.7 trillion of assets under management, has a market capitalization of just $25 billion.
The Swiss bank was founded in 1856. Coinbase was founded in 2012.
The numbers are staggering.
In a trading update at the start of April, Coinbase revealed it had 56 million verified users. Anyone with a smart phone can go through Coinbase to buy, sell and hold crypto: that’s a total addressable market of 3.5
