Blockchain.com CFO hints at going public via IPO in 18 months
Cryptocurrency wallet provider Blockchain.com is considering going public, but there are no immediate plans for action. Macrina Kgil, chief financial officer of the unicorn behind the popular wallet service, crypto exchange and a block explorer, made this known in a Forbes interview.
Speaking on the future plans after Blockchain.com surpassed $1 trillion in crypto transactions, Kgil hinted that her company is looking to go public via an IPO in 18 months or more away.
“These numbers don’t reflect what’s bought and sold on our exchange, but rather real usage of crypto: instantly sending value across the world as easily as sending an email,” she writes in a blog post.
Blockchain.com claims to have registered 73 million crypto wallets and over 31 verified users in more than 200 countries, alongside a market share of 28% of all bitcoin transactions.
This milestone is really a great message that crypto is not just for going on an exchange and buying and selling,” Kgil told Forbes.
The London-based firm, an early entrant in the crypto space and one of the industry’s best-known wallet providers, has reported a 300% increase in active users in 2021 as interest in cryptocurrencies was soaring on the back of a heady bull run earlier this year.
“The main pieces of crypto we hold are Bitcoin and Ethereum … but we do also hold Altcoins, as a company, when we think it makes sense,” Kgil says.
She noted that for an initial public offering to be successful, there are certain prerequisites they have to keep an eye on such as having a well-defined corporate structure.
After Coinbase’ mega listing, the cryptocurrency community kept a close watch on big crypto players to determine whether or not any of them will follow the same path.
Despite its rocky relationship with regulators, Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao also announced that the exchange’s US business is looking at the IPO route.
Blockchain.com, led by CEO and co-founder Peter Smith, raised $300 million in March. The growth round valued the company at $5.2 billion and was led by partners of DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners and VY Capital. But, more interestingly, it came just one month after the company raised $120 million in a funding round that valued it at $3 billion.
In April, Coinbase went public in a historic direct listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange that valued the popular exchange at more than $100 billion. However, this milestone come at a time when as the crypto industry enjoyed a historic bull run that had sent its total market cap beyond $2 trillion in April.
While Blockchain.com is the latest large crypto business to look at the IPO route, it’s unlikely to be the last. A host of high-profile crypto players, including crypto exchange Kraken and stablecoin issuer Circle, are also considering the prospect, and more could do so soon.
