Coinbase coins it on Nasdaq

The New York Stock Exchange has just suffered a double indignity at the hands of the newest listed stock in the US: Coinbase chose the Nasdaq instead for its direct listing — partly swayed by the offer of the COIN ticker — and the cryptocurrency exchange has soared to a valuation way beyond that of the NYSE’s operator, Intercontinental Exchange, on its debut.

Coinbase set a reference price of $250 for its listing, but opened at $381 for a valuation of $76bn. Back in 2018, private investors had valued it at just $8bn.

Its recent surge in value and transactional volumes has gone hand-in-hand with the digital currency it mainly deals in. Bitcoin hit another record high of more than $64,000 today and has more than doubled in value already this year.

Lex says Coinbase shares are a bet on the two entwined factors of the price of bitcoin and regulators’ tolerance of cryptocurrencies. For its sales to grow, bitcoin’s price must keep rising, but scale and volatility would invite closer regulatory scrutiny.

Miles Kruppa points out Coinbase has grown into the largest US cryptocurrency company by hewing closely to regulators and maintaining a secure service, avoiding the stumbles that have dogged other trading venues. The company estimated it oversees about 11 per cent of the total cryptocurrency market, with $90bn in assets at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, central banks are exploring their own digital currencies, with the European Union’s digital euro perhaps ready to launch in about five years, MEPs were told on Wednesday. India may introduce its own digital coin, while banning rivals, according to this week’s #fintechFT, while the rapid digitalisation of China’s renminbi could hasten its acceptance as the main rival to the dollar, says Templeton Global Macro’s chief investment officer Michael Hasenstab.

The Internet of (Five) Things

1. Virgin-O2 deal cleared to take on BT
The UK competition watchdog has provisionally cleared Virgin Media’s £31bn tie-up with mobile operator O2 after finding it was unlikely to lead to reduced competition or higher prices for wholesale mobile services. Respective owners Liberty Global and Telefónica struck a deal to combine their UK operations in May 2020, which will unite the country’s second-largest broadband network with its largest mobile operator. 

2. Facebook in GDPR probe over data leak
The EU privacy regulator is investigating Facebook over a possible breach of the General Data Protection Regulation, following reports of a large-scale data leak in which the personal information of 533m users was shared online.

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3. Why it is so difficult to quit QAnon 
The online and interactive nature of fringe conspiracy theories such as QAnon make it hard to leave, former followers tell The Big Read. It gamifies the process of truth-seeking as everyone is invited to be an armchair sleuth, picking apart Q’s “drops” and spreading the word. For adherents, the process of deradicalisation can be painstaking.

4. Sunday payday
Sunday, a restaurant and hotel payment app, has raised €20m in Europe’s largest seed-funding round this year. It involves customers scanning a QR code on their table to pay the bill with trials suggesting it saved 15 minutes per table on average and spend per head increased 10 per cent “because you have more time for another coffee or limoncello”. Elsewhere, Silver Lake has paid about $800m for a stake in G42, an artificial intelligence and cloud computing group with links to Abu Dhabi’s ruling family.

5. Tech opinions: Spacs, AI, muons, snark
Superapp Grab announced it would use a special purpose acquisition company to float on Nasdaq just as the rest of the Spac market is deflating rapidly. There is trouble looming, writes Brooke Masters, and US regulators must do more. Lex’s Letter from Asia also examines the Spac gold rush. Sarah O’Connor finds it creepy that AI is teaching workers to be more human. The latest way to improve how call-centre employees deal with tricky customers has the problem upside down. Philip Ball, whose most recent book is How to Grow a Human, explains why the secret force revealed by muons may be science’s oldest. Finally, snark is the default tone of a million tweets, Reddit posts, comment sections and online blogs — the arch, mocking chatter of life online. But if the line between snark and cruelty was always blurry, it is now starting to feel nonexistent, writes Elaine Moore.

Tech tools — Microsoft Surface Laptop 4

Microsoft is shipping new versions of its 13.5in and 15in Microsoft Surface Laptop on Thursday, offering for the first time a choice of either AMD or Intel processors inside. As The Verge points out, the AMD Laptop 4 starts at $999 and is $300 cheaper than the Intel one due to an older processor, but performance may not be that much different. Up to 19 hours of battery life is promised on the 13.5in AMD model compared to up to 17 hours on the Intel version. Microsoft is also updating its accessories, with the Surface Headphones 2+ featuring noise cancellation and an eight-microphone system for $300. In addition, there are new headsets, a speaker and a webcam. Microsoft’s blog post on all the new products is here.