Morning Markets: It felt like the venture space was cooling just slightly in recent days. Until now. Coinbase’s latest round of $300 million gives the startup a self-reported valuation of more than $8 billion.
Stocks are falling both at home and abroad. The Nasdaq went into correction, followed by the S&P 500. The stock market turbulence has been so stark in China that it has slowed the pace of unicorn fundraising in the country, something that would have seemed impossible this summer.
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But, while there was a hint of fall in the air, Coinbase pulled the calendar back to the headier times when nine-figure rounds were so frequent they became banal. Yes, Coinbase closed its long-rumored round, securing $300 million at a post-money valuation of over $8 billion, according to its own release.
Coinbase’s Series E is nearly three times as much as the company raised in its Series D, and the fresh cash brings Coinbase’s total-capital-raised-to-date to over $520 million.
That’s a lot of money. Indeed, if Coinbase’s capital raised figured is compared to the market cap of the world’s various cryptocurrencies and other similar assets, it would rank around 20th.
But, looking merely at Coinbase’s raised figure is too small, too timid. Let’s compare its newly-boosted valuation to the world’s most highly-valued crypto assets:
This chart was inspired by the lovely Jonathan Shieber of TechCrunch.
We raise this for two reasons. One, the chart is inherently funny. And two, because it shows that the wager on a particular crypto company is looking like a better investment than putting money to work in nearly any of the other crypto assets that are for sale. During the last few crypto booms, some investors told me that it was probably simpler to just invest in various tokens instead of companies working on blockchains — faster returns and your money would be more liquid to boot.
However, at least in the case of Coinbase, that wager likely wouldn’t have worked. Coinbase is also the company that every investor I’ve spoken to in ages has wanted to invest in; it’s been a known winner for a while now, so its performance isn’t a huge surprise.
And now with $300 million, Coinbase is well-capitalized to survive either a market downturn (one will come, eventually), and the current Crypto Interregnum.
Top Image Credit: Li-Anne Dias.
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