This week, Intercontinental Exchange owned Bakkt announced that it is going public amidst the increasing demand for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
As we reported, Bakkt will go public through a merger with blank check firm VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings, giving it a $2.1 billion valuation. Backed by Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group, this deal will provide Bakkt with $207 million in cash and $325 million from other investors with an additional $50 million investment from ICE.
The blank-check firm raised $300 million through IPO last year. SPACs are shell companies that raise money via an IPO to take another company public within two years — an alternative to go public that has become popular.
Post-merger, the renamed Bakkt Holdings will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
However, the crypto market isn’t feeling any excitement about this, with analyst Mati Greenspan noting that their volumes are “minuscule.”
CT doesn’t have any love lost for Bakkt founder Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Senator who, unlike the vocal Bitcoiner Wyoming Senate-elect Cynthia Lummis, never showed support for cryptocurrencies.
Companies are going public with no users and made up “conservative” projections. This tells you how much money is floating around looking for a home. #Bakkt pic.twitter.com/BOdJgyzLyB
— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) January 13, 2021
Bakkt is actually aiming for a lofty $2 billion valuation given that it only had a mere $89 million volume on the day seemingly every major crypto platform surpassed their records by big margins. However, they project 30m+ active users and $500m revenue for 2025.
“It did not look very good,” commented Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of derivatives platform FTX on Bakkt’s SPAC.
But what the market, both in and outside crypto, is really excited about is Coinbase.
“Unlike Coinbase, which has managed to capture significant market share and has a (mostly) working app, Bakkt is not a stock that I’d personally be rushing to own, at least not until they’ve proven their ability to captivate this challenging market,” wrote analyst Mati Greenspan in his daily newsletter Quantum Economics.
The San Francisco-based crypto exchange-traded $9.56 billion on Dec. 11, and of course, crashed due to so much activity.
The exchange confidentiality applied to go public in December and even brought on Goldman Sachs to help with IPO Plans; crypto data provider Massari puts Coinbase’s valuation at $28 billion. The Coinbase Pre-IPO futures trading on FTX puts it at a market cap of $70 billion.
FTX’s Sam actually did some math for Coinbase’s valuation to come to numbers that points, the exchange charges about 4x more fees than FTX.
“A lot of people complain about Coinbase downtime, or lack of features, or rate limits, or withdrawals. I wonder if Coinbase even cares,” said Sam adding: “Coinbase makes its money when your high school classmate decides to buy their first $25 of BTC on the app,” and on that, it charges 14.5% fees.
“Coinbase does, actually, make real money! This isn’t Bakkt 2.0,” he said.
Some more calculations (not official, mind you, but as he puts it, just bulls**t) later and between $20b and infinity, got FTX an estimated valuation of $5 billion. Founded in 2018, FTX has a native token FTT, which is trading at $8.55, with a market cap of $805 million.
The post Crypto Market Is Not Interested in Owning Bakkt Stock; Coinbase Is the Real Deal Making Money first appeared on BitcoinExchangeGuide.
