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October 30, 2020
As Airbnb plots to go public, the home-sharing company announced Friday that it would create a new "host endowment" and allocate 9.2 million shares to fund it.
Airbnb said it will begin investing the money back into its host community — using input from a new host advisory board — once the value of the endowment surpasses $1 billion. Bloomberg had previously reported that, after a stock split, Airbnb shares are currently valued around $34.88 apiece, giving the endowment a rough value of around $320 million to start.
The company said that it does have the option to add more stock, up to 2% of the company's value, over time. Early ideas of how the money may be used on hosts include grant programs for educational workshops or annual payouts to groups of hosts. The endowment is a separate idea from Airbnb's interest in giving stock to its host community at the time of the IPO, similar to Uber and Lyft's system for rewarding drivers during their public offerings.
From Your Site Articles
Biz Carson
Biz Carson ( @bizcarson) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol, covering Silicon Valley with a focus on startups and venture capital. Previously, she reported for Forbes and was co-editor of Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list. Before that, she worked for Business Insider, Gigaom, and Wired and started her career as a newspaper designer for Gannett.
App store laws, Microsoft AR and Square buys Tidal
Welcome to this weekend's Source Code podcast.
Cole Burston/Bloomberg
March 7, 2021
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
March 7, 2021
This week on the Source Code podcast: First, an update on Google's user-tracking change. Then, Ben Pimentel joins the show to discuss Square buying Tidal, and what it means for the fintech and music worlds. Later, Emily Birnbaum explains the bill moving through the Arizona legislature that has Google and Apple worried about the future of app stores. And finally, Janko Roettgers discusses Microsoft Mesh, the state of AR and VR headsets, and when we're all going to be doing meetings as holograms.
For more on the topics in this episode:
<ul class="ee-ul"><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/square-tidal-jack-dorsey-banking" target="_self">Jack Dorsey is so money: What Tidal and banking do for Square</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/policy/apple-google-lobbyists-arizona-bill" target="_self">Apple and Google lobbyists are swarming Arizona over a bill that would reform the app store</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/virginia-second-state-privacy-2650864098" target="_self">Virginia becomes second state with comprehensive privacy law</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/microsoft-mesh-ar-vr-platform" target="_self">Microsoft's master plan for consumer AR: Start with the plumbing</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/next-up/microsoft-mesh-facebook-ar-glasses?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">How Microsoft could beat Facebook in AR</a></li></ul><p><strong>Subscribe to the show: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/protocols-source-code/id1497440658" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1mc6ODYq0nZ8hrVDuvQfeL?si=HDPznyjDSEqv5EvMZxhKxQ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Spotify</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS95OVNfTjJfaw==" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Podcasts</a> | <a href="https://pca.st/7ktyvlll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pocket Casts</a> | </strong><a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/y9S_N2_k" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>RSS</strong></a></p>
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David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
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The future of computing at the edge: an interview with Intel’s Tom Lantzsch
An interview with Tom Lantzsch, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Group at Intel
February 28, 2021
Saul Hudson has a deep knowledge of creating brand voice identity, especially in understanding and targeting messages in cutting-edge technologies. He enjoys commissioning, editing, writing, and business development, in helping companies to build passionate audiences and accelerate their growth. Hudson has reported from more than 30 countries, from war zones to boardrooms to presidential palaces. He has led multinational, multi-lingual teams and managed operations for hundreds of journalists. Hudson is a Managing Partner at Angle42, a strategic communications consultancy.
February 27, 2021
An interview with Tom Lantzsch
Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corporation
Edge computing had been on the rise in the last 18 months – and accelerated amid the need for new applications to solve challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tom Lantzsch, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corp., thinks there are more innovations to come – and wants technology leaders to think equally about data and the algorithms as critical differentiators.
In his role at Intel, Lantzsch leads the worldwide group of solutions architects across IoT market segments, including retail, banking, hospitality, education, industrial, transportation, smart cities and healthcare. And he's seen first-hand how artificial intelligence run at the edge can have a big impact on customers' success.
Protocol sat down with Lantzsch to talk about the challenges faced by companies seeking to move from the cloud to the edge; some of the surprising ways that Intel has found to help customers and the next big breakthrough in this space.
What are the biggest trends you are seeing with edge computing and IoT?
A few years ago, there was a notion that the edge was going to be a simplistic model, where we were going to have everything connected up into the cloud and all the compute was going to happen in the cloud. At Intel, we had a bit of a contrarian view. We thought much of the interesting compute was going to happen closer to where data was created. And we believed, at that time, that camera technology was going to be the driving force – that just the sheer amount of content that was created would be overwhelming to ship to the cloud – so we'd have to do compute at the edge. A few years later – that hypothesis is in action and we're seeing edge compute happen in a big way.
<p>The last 18 months have been a wild time to be in technology. We've seen edge compute come to life to help businesses adapt during the pandemic. At the same time, we are also seeing how 5G is going to drive up interest, especially from a networking perspective, rather than a use-case perspective. We also see lot of people that are focused on their data, but the <em>algorithms</em> that companies train with the data are going to be their critical assets. It doesn't matter what company or what industry; <em>this</em> will really become the differentiator for many companies.</p><p>And particularly amid the backdrop of the pandemic, we've seen how companies are using technology to either bring workers back in safely or <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/covid-19-response-sensormatic-article.html" target="_blank">serve their customers in new ways</a>, <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/customer-spotlight/stories/brentwood-academy-customer-spotlight.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">educate children in new ways</a> -- all things that have accelerated the digital transformation that had been underway. I recently read a <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-has-pushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformed-business-forever" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">McKinsey survey</a> that reported on the "speedup in creating digital or digitally enhanced offerings. Across regions, the results suggest a seven-year increase, on average, in the rate at which companies are developing these products and services."</p><p>And based on what we're seeing at Intel, those are lifesaving and industry saving investments happening today – completely re-designing the way that <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/covid-19-response-mic-article.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">patients are treated</a>, and businesses operate.</p><h4>What are you particularly expecting to see this year?</h4><p>What I find most interesting is the work that combines IoT with networking capabilities – and I think this is going to be a year of expansive exploration and working with our customers to put these two things together to solve real business challenges.</p><p>When we first started the integration of networking technology and operational technology capabilities and layered that across the industry verticals, we could count the amount of interested customers and opportunities on one hand. Last year, it was five times that many and this year we see that number increasing significantly already. So, we're excited to see the industry continue to build excitement to scale those types of deployments.</p><h4>What role does AI play at the edge and in what way is Intel involved?</h4><p>An AI use case recently grabbed my attention: employees in a restaurant being screened by a device that checks temperature while the employees are washing their hands – and provides a determination on whether they'd done it adequately before they report to work. I have seen other applications using similar technology in the <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/offering/a5b3b000000TiMSAA0/using-ai-to-make-construction-site-safer?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">construction industry</a>, where an AI algorithm scans to see if employees have their helmet, goggles, vest and other safety equipment on properly to determine if they are ready to work. And the best part is – that the employer can see aggregate data on these interactions to determine if more training on handwashing or helmet wearing is needed.</p><p>At Intel, in addition to providing the fundamental base technology to enable these applications, we work with a lot of third-party developers to create these applications. And we help the developers scale them across multiple industries with our salesforce. So, we may not make the scan technology that determines if you have the right gear on, but we orchestrate that coordination across our ecosystem with all of our partners to effectively put it into a <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">catalog</a> so that if customers are interested in that sort of application, we can provide them with different parties to make that happen.</p><h4>Is there a problem with fragmentation in the market and how can that be solved?</h4><p>It's very fragmented. I gave just two examples of totally different workers coming to work in different industries and I can give you five more that are different again. Although the base technology that Intel creates to enable this type of innovation is very horizontal in nature, the reality is that bringing those to life must be very "vertically-centered" and very "use-case centered" – and must take into account, geography. The two employee use cases I cited look very different if you are talking about employees in North America, India or Germany. So, all in all, this is a holistic ecosystem challenge – and an ecosystem solution.</p><p>At Intel, we're in a unique situation to orchestrate these solutions. </p><p><cite class="pull-quote">People tend to think of Intel as providing the technical footprint that enables edge computing – but we also have the developer reach – and we can use our ecosystem and scale to help our end customers get access to the best solutions.</cite></p><h4>What sort of challenges do customers face when they're attempting to adopt edge computing?</h4><p>There are two common challenges. One is the technical question of 'Who can I work with?' A customer may have a chip focus but actually, it's a more complex question than a chip. We like that complexity, because we can be an adviser to them and <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/partners-by-industry?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bring to the table partners</a> that they can work with to solve that complexity leveraging our technical knowledge and ecosystem network. </p><p>The second thing that companies struggle with is the challenge of how to fund getting into this space – even if the business case warrants the investment. The world has changed. Companies don't want to write a big capital check for these types of investments – they want a pay-as-you-go model, like you see with the cloud. We've been working with customers to find a way to make that happen – and I think that is going to be a bigger part of the conversation moving forward.</p><p>You can see it across almost every aspect of technology now. We rent compute more than we buy compute. Evidenced by the success of AWS, companies can rent compute from Amazon instead of building their own data center – and there are many benefits to that approach. In the old world, even for this video conference that we're having today we would have installed capital to do this. Now it's just a service. And I think that edge as a service is right around the corner.</p><h4>Do you have an example of that?</h4><p>A customer in Mexico wanted to deploy outdoor WiFi and add security features into it. So, it was an edge-based computing issue that was part connectivity. But there was actually way more to it than just installing it. We not only helped to solved the technological challenge creatively and coordinated the <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/partners-by-industry?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ecosystem of providers</a> to solve this, but we also found a way so that the customer could get into this market with a service-based model without needing to outlay a lot of capital.</p><p>Other semiconductor companies would have a difficult time partnering on both sides of that challenge, but Intel can do it because we have the scale.</p><h4>How do businesses identify which functions they do want to perform at the edge versus in the cloud?</h4><p>It really comes down to a question of what you're trying to do and how you do it at the lowest cost, highest quality and standard in computability.</p><p>If you have an application and it can perform what you need it to do in the cloud, you'll probably run it there. The cloud is a great thing - there's infinite compute and lots of choice in a well-understood developer environment.</p><p>But there are many things you can't or shouldn't do in the cloud for certain reasons. Take the camera example from earlier. Say you have eight high-density cameras, and you want an action on them immediately. You may not be able to afford the latency that comes with going up into the cloud. Or it may be a financial challenge – that its actually more expensive to send that data to the cloud over and over again, and it makes sense to invest in compute at the edge. There are nuances in the decision-making. It really comes down to what you want the application to do, how quickly and how much it should cost.</p><h4>How does Intel help developers to learn, to build and then test their solutions at the edge?</h4><p>To enable what we know to be interesting and challenging use cases at the edge, required us to change our focus on who these developers are and what they care about. We learned that they <em>really</em> don't care about what hardware they're running on. The modern developers are fairly well extracted from the hardware – they just assume the compute is going to be available for them to do their work.</p><p>To make sure we can deliver on that, we typically target developers by specific capability. The most advanced case that we've been studying on the edge recently is focused video and specifically, video inferencing and AI inferencing. We created a tool called <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a>, which was developed in a way that developers didn't have to care about the hardware it runs on. It's a model optimization technology that enables them to easily scale out to different hardware platforms. That's proven to be an interesting value proposition to these developers.</p><p>Our goal with <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a> is democratize AI activity and inference at the edge. We want to make it simple -- to put these tools in the hands of non-data scientists and make it work. As a part of that process, we're also creating an environment where they can develop anyplace, anytime, anywhere they want to be. We're so proud of our <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a> community and are constantly working to grow the community and release new features and capabilities to edge developers.</p><h4>What's the possible next breakthrough that you see for Intel in edge computing and the IoT space?</h4><p>I'm looking forward to the big breakthrough when we show integrated 5G, Virtual Private Network and the edge workloads all in one unit. More to come.</p>
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Saul Hudson has a deep knowledge of creating brand voice identity, especially in understanding and targeting messages in cutting-edge technologies. He enjoys commissioning, editing, writing, and business development, in helping companies to build passionate audiences and accelerate their growth. Hudson has reported from more than 30 countries, from war zones to boardrooms to presidential palaces. He has led multinational, multi-lingual teams and managed operations for hundreds of journalists. Hudson is a Managing Partner at Angle42, a strategic communications consultancy.
Power
Everything you need to know about the Compass IPO
The company hasn't yet disclosed its target listing date or share price.
Compass is a real estate brokerage startup that provides an online platform for buying, renting and selling real estate.
Photo: Smith Collection/Getty Images
March 3, 2021
Jane Seidel is Protocol's social media manager. She was previously a platform producer at The Wall Street Journal, creating mobile content and crafting alert strategy. Prior to that, she worked in audience development at WSJ and on digital editorial at NBC Universal. She lives in Brooklyn.
Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
March 2, 2021
On March 1, Compass released its S-1 in anticipation of an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The company hasn't yet disclosed its target listing date or share price.
Compass, founded in 2012 by Robert Reffkin and Ori Allon, is a real estate brokerage startup that provides an online platform for buying, renting and selling real estate. The company hopes to replace the "paper-driven, antiquated workflow" of buying a house with a seamless, all-digital platform that "empowers real estate agents to deliver an exceptional experience." Rather than trying to make real estate agents a thing of the past, the company says it's working with them. And a lot of the company's success hinges on attracting and retaining agents.
<p>The company began with an $8 million seed round, and by 2018, the firm, flush with <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-01/softbank-backed-compass-real-estate-brokerage-files-for-ipo" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SoftBank funding</a>, launched an <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/real-estate-company-compass-struggles-to-deliver-on-big-technology-promise-51587171194" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">acquisition campaign</a> around the country, with the goal of grabbing 20% of 20 markets by 2020. It worked fairly well at first — it let agents keep a high percentage of revenue split! — but eventually Compass had to turn a profit. At the end of 2018, <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ai-visionary-joseph-sirosh-joins-compass-as-chief-technology-officer-300759765.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the company hired a new CTO</a>, Joseph Sirosh, Microsoft's former CTO of AI. So far, Sirosh has helped introduce a host of new Compass products and opened two new campuses. </p><p>Spooked by economic conditions at the onset of the pandemic, Compass laid off <a href="https://www.protocol.com/coronavirus-compass-layoffs-real-estate" target="_self">15% of its staff</a>. But a sharp increase in housing market demand as people sought bigger living spaces in the perpetual WFH era boosted stocks of other <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/investing/zillow-z-earnings-beat-strong-outlook-housing-boom-pandemic" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">real estate companies like Zillow</a>. By the summer, Compass was posting record-breaking monthly revenue — agents netted 50% more revenue than the same period last year. </p>
<p class=""><em>Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated net losses in 2020. This story was updated on March 3, 2021.</em></p>
What does Compass do?
<p>Compass' primary offering is a CRM that contains a marketing center (Digital ads! Videos! Email newsletters!), market analysis tools and client rosters. Compass also has an "AI-powered comparative market analysis tool" that lets agents optimize prices, and "Compass Collections," a visual workspace where agents and clients can look at homes and chat within the UI.</p><p>The company says it has more than 19,000 agents across the country (19,385 as of Dec. 31, 2020), and has seen a 19% increase in the number of transactions the company's agents close in their second year, compared with their first. Compass reported an 88% increase in agent teams using the platform on a weekly basis. The company also boasts that its agents sell homes in 21% fewer days on average compared to agents at firms with comparable home sales. </p>Compass’ Financials
<p>Compass takes a fee of around 2.5% to 3% of the sale price of a home. It makes almost all of its revenue from these fees, though the company hopes to grow the share of revenue it makes from adjacent services such as arranging the title and escrow for a home sale and referring new homeowners to relevant services.</p><p>Compass revenues have grown more than tenfold since 2017, as the company expanded from operating in 12 to 44 markets. In 2020, Compass generated $3.7 billion in revenue, up from $2.4 billion in 2019, $885 million in 2018 and $370 million in 2017. </p><p>The company has yet to turn a profit. It posted a record net loss of $388 million in 2019, and improved slightly in 2020 with $270 million in net losses. Compass' biggest cost by far is "commissions and other transaction-related expenses," which primarily encompasses commissions paid to the real estate agents working on behalf of the company. This expense line has tracked quite closely with overall revenue, representing 81% of total revenue in 2019 and 82% in 2020, for instance. Sales and marketing expenses have swelled eightfold since 2016, but they represented a smaller portion of overall revenue in 2020 than in 2016 — a sign that Compass has managed to achieve more organic growth in recent years. </p>What could go wrong?
<p>Three themes stick out from Compass' risk section: the macroeconomics of the housing market, their independent contractor labor model and the threat of other self-professed real estate disruptors.</p><p>Nobody can forget 2008 and what it did to the housing market. The next crisis will probably look quite different, but it's hard to deny that the U.S. housing market is in a <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/reinvention-of-spending/buying-homes-online-pandemic" target="_self">precarious state</a>: Fueled by record-low interest rates, home prices have soared in value and housing supply is hovering <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSACSR" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">near record lows</a>. On the other hand, millions of Americans are still suffering from the economic fallout of the pandemic. Forbearance programs are set to expire in the coming months, at which point U.S. homeowners will owe <a href="http://www.freddiemac.com/research/insight/20201117_mortgage_forbearance_rate_during_COVID-19.page" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">close to a trillion dollars</a> in backlogged mortgage debt. </p><p>These conditions make Compass vulnerable to an economic downturn. This is particularly true since it is operating at a loss, and therefore is reliant on investors for runway. A sharp market downturn could set off a dangerous feedback loop, in which skittish investors close their pocket books to Compass, which would in turn diminish the outlook for the company.</p><ul><li>"Monetary policies of the federal government and its agencies may have a material impact on our business" is not a remarkable piece of insight in a risk factors section, but Compass is sensitive to things like interest rates. Increases in mortgage rates could ding Compass's utility, especially if people are opting to rent rather than paying higher mortgage rates. </li></ul><p>Some might be tempted to compare Compass to gig-economy companies, since agents who work with Compass are independent contractors. But that's standard practice in real estate sales, and sales agents appear to prefer it.<br></p><ul><li>The comparison to ride-hail drivers and meal couriers is weak in part because trade groups like the National Association of Realtors are politically influential and have fought to assure the status of agents as independent contractors.</li><li>Compass is unlikely to face the questions of regulation and conduct that have arisen for companies like Uber and DoorDash. California's AB 5, for example, has a carveout for real estate agents. </li></ul><p>Finally, Compass is betting that its service model — based on extracting fees from traditional real estate agents — will prevail in the U.S. real estate market. </p><ul><li>iBuyers such as Zillow, Opendoor and Redfin would likely argue that Compass doesn't go far enough in disrupting the traditional brokerage process. These companies <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/reinvention-of-spending/buying-homes-online-pandemic" target="_self">buy homes directly</a> from consumers and then flip them back onto the market, effectively cutting out brokerage fees altogether. Opendoor, Zillow and Redfin only accounted for less than 1% of U.S. residential real estate transactions in 2019, but they have grown fast and <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/opendoor-rides-spac-deal-to-lofty-18-billion-valuation-at-market-debut" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">achieved multibillion-dollar valuations</a>. </li><li>Even SoftBank, one of Compass's top backers, can't seem to make up its mind as to which model will prevail — the Japanese investment giant has also <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/15/softbank-backed-opendoor-has-announced-a-massive-layoff-cutting-35-of-its-employees/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">invested considerably</a> in Opendoor. </li><li>"A significant change in consumer sales that eliminates or minimizes the role of the agent in the real estate transaction process could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations," Compass writes. It goes on to cite iBuyers as one such threat, adding, "consumer preferences regarding buying or selling houses and financing their home purchase will determine if these models reduce or replace the long-standing preference for full-service agents."</li><li>Compass also cites the risk of a competitor undercutting its fee rates within the same service model: "If industry conditions change such that other platforms offer similar technologies to ours at a lower price or for free, we may be forced to reduce the percentage of commissions that we collect from our agents, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be adversely impacted."</li></ul><p>It's also worth noting that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-25/softbank-backed-broker-compass-rejects-comparisons-with-wework" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">critics</a> have accused Compass of being a traditional real estate brokerage valued and dressed up like a tech company. In 2019, the company's CFO sent an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-25/softbank-backed-broker-compass-rejects-comparisons-with-wework" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">eight-point memo</a> to staff and agents detailing the ways the company was different from WeWork (this came roughly a month after WeWork's IPO plans imploded). Compass wants to be clear, though: Unlike WeWork, the company has no debt. </p>Who gets rich?
<p>Compass has divided its shares into Class A, Class B and Class C. Each share of Class C receives 20 votes per share; Class A receives one per share; Class B has no voting rights. </p> <ul><li>SoftBank's Vision Fund holds slightly more than a third stake in the company with 34.8% of the Class A shares. </li><li>All executive officers and directors as a group have 5.2% of Class A shares. </li><li>Reffkin has 2.4% of the Class A shares and all of the Class C shares. </li><li>Sirosh has 1.2% of Class A shares </li><li>Allon has 5.2% of Class A shares.</li></ul> <p>Other investors include the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, Fidelity, Wellington Management and the Qatar Investment Authority.</p>What people are saying
<ul><li><strong>"They're a disruptor by capital, not innovation. It's amazing it's gotten this far. They're a brokerage that doesn't offer anything different; they're just better at selling an idea."</strong> —A New York <a href="https://marker.medium.com/how-compass-became-the-bane-of-real-estate-dc3738641b57" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">real estate executive</a> told Marker.</li><li><strong>"They say they're a tech company, and they back it up in the sense that they have hired lots of engineers, who are building and releasing technology. They're talking the talk and walking the walk, no question about that. The question is, does it make a difference?"</strong> —Mike DelPrete, a real estate strategist, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-01/softbank-backed-compass-real-estate-brokerage-files-for-ipo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">told Bloomberg</a>. </li><li><strong>"What's happening now with the acquisitions and the scrambles is they're attempting to reposition themselves as a tech company. Is the market going to buy that story?"</strong> —Real estate tech investor Clelia Peters <a href="https://marker.medium.com/how-compass-became-the-bane-of-real-estate-dc3738641b57" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">told Marker</a>.</li></ul>From Your Site Articles
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Jane Seidel is Protocol's social media manager. She was previously a platform producer at The Wall Street Journal, creating mobile content and crafting alert strategy. Prior to that, she worked in audience development at WSJ and on digital editorial at NBC Universal. She lives in Brooklyn.
Transforming 2021
Blockchain, QR codes and your phone: the race to build vaccine passports
Digital verification systems could give people the freedom to work and travel. Here's how they could actually happen.
One day, you might not need to carry that physical passport around, either.
Photo: CommonPass
February 23, 2021
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
February 23, 2021
There will come a time, hopefully in the near future, when you'll feel comfortable getting on a plane again. You might even stop at the lounge at the airport, head to the regional office when you land and maybe even see a concert that evening. This seemingly distant reality will depend upon vaccine rollouts continuing on schedule, an open-sourced digital verification system and, amazingly, the blockchain.
Several countries around the world have begun to prepare for what comes after vaccinations. Swaths of the population will be vaccinated before others, but that hasn't stopped industries decimated by the pandemic from pioneering ways to get some people back to work and play. One of the most promising efforts is the idea of a "vaccine passport," which would allow individuals to show proof that they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 in a way that could be verified by businesses to allow them to travel, work or relax in public without a great fear of spreading the virus.
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</div></p><p>But building a system that everyone agrees with — and can access — is no small task. There are several companies working on competing projects to verify vaccinations. But beyond that, there are more than a few hurdles that could prevent vaccine passports from succeeding, from antiquated medical records systems to interoperability issues and privacy concerns. Here's how they could actually succeed. </p><h3>Competing projects, similar standards</h3><p>Pretty much since the first blockchain white paper, people have been looking for perfect examples of where a distributed, immutable ledger could be valuable. There's obviously the push to use it for currencies, and companies have tried to use it for things like tracking <a href="https://www.protocol.com/ibm-blockchain-supply-produce-coffee" target="_self">food production</a> and <a href="https://www.govtech.com/products/Blockchain-Voting-Debate-Heats-Up-After-Historic-Election.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">voting</a>, but there are few use cases that have truly taken off, at least so far. "We've been working on this since 2014; we never thought that health care would be the kind of the use case that we take this mainstream," Jamie Smith, the senior director of business development at Evernym, a company focused on using the blockchain as a basis for verifying identities, told Protocol. </p><p>Smith said Evernym had been discussing its concepts with automakers, retailers, telcos, governments, loyalty companies and banks prior to the pandemic. One of those companies was IAG, the airline group that owns British Airways, which had been interested in the idea of contactless travel based on a single identity credential that follows you from the airport check-in to your gate. With the pandemic, that morphed into thinking about ways to verify that passengers have had negative COVID tests, and eventually, that they've received a vaccine. "From our perspective, it was a really easy lift to see," Smith said. "We're doing contactless travel, and we just added verifiable credentials for test results."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>It's a similar genesis for IBM's Digital Health Pass initiative, which leader Eric Piscini said started about two years ago as a way to store people's entire health records in a safe, accessible platform. It also relies on the blockchain for its immutable record of proof, and both Evernym and IBM are part of an open-standards group called the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which aims to bring private credentialed vaccine records to business and people around the world. Companies are working on their own implementations of the standards, but Evernym's Smith said the data is meant to be portable from one passport to another. </p><p>Most of the companies working on passports say their systems are private by design, especially given that they're mainly working off the same open standards. In most cases, the health information only ever remains on a user's phone, but where it asks to verify that the user's information meets a system's standards — such as whether this person has had two COVID vaccines and should be allowed into an office — that information is recorded on a blockchain. "You can, using blockchain technologies, verify that someone has been tested recently, without having access to the underlying data," Piscini said. "I don't know any other technology where you can do that."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Similarly, the nonprofit Commons Project's CommonPass, backed by the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce, started out as a project to bring an analog to Apple Health for Android. JP Pollak, a senior researcher at Cornell and founder of the Commons Project, first launched CommonHealth to bring the sort of data and insights that Apple Health offers to iPhone owners to Android users. Last summer, the group started building an app that could take health data and privately share it with others — in that case, it was to help truckers stuck at the borders in <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/digital-technology-re-opening-africa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">East African countries</a> who couldn't easily prove they'd taken COVID tests. This morphed into vaccine credentialing, with the group now working to pull together the various data streams needed to get a project like this off the ground. </p><p>"Health care institutions, EMR vendors, retail pharmacies, state vaccine registries, all issuing people a digital verifiable credential of their vaccination record that they could then use in the app of their choice, to be able to get access to various kinds of services," Pollak said. CommonPass is also working with the Mayo Clinic, as well as Epic Systems and Cerner, two of the largest EMR vendors. </p><h3>Something for everyone </h3><p>With so many competing efforts to become the world's digital vaccine passport, it might seem that the country is heading for some sort of VHS versus Betamax format war for proving everyone has had COVID vaccines. But given that so many of the efforts are using the same standards, and in many cases, looking to embed their tech in someone else's app rather than their own, the race might be less about the best tech winning, and more about various approaches working in different situations. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"The intent is not to be the only company; we don't want to be the proprietary platform that everybody has to use because they have no choice," IBM's Piscini said. "That's not who we are right now: That's the IBM from 30 years ago, not the IBM of today."</p><p>For IBM, though, the selling point is that the company already works with so many other massive companies. Why look elsewhere for a vaccine passport solution if your airline booking system is already powered by IBM? "We believe our network is going to be more valuable than any other because of our scale and our ability to integrate the platform with CRM systems, building systems or stadium systems — we can do that every day," Piscini said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://www.protocol.com/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTM1MjYyM30._ykxxCyx3_wDbZrYgCcmK0QT2Ue1tZFdP5pf60kOmPU/image.jpg?width=980" id="2c61a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3967636652192acfdaad341861263bc8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">IATA's digital passport app.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo: IATA</small></p><p>For other companies, it's about securing new partnerships with major players in the hopes of finding that scale. Evernym, for example, is working with International Air Transport Association, the airline industry's trade association, on an air travel-specific app called Travel Pass. IATA is working with airlines and local governments to ensure it has the latest requirements to feed the app's rules engine. "It will say, 'Hey, you're flying JFK to Heathrow, you need a PCR test 48 hours in advance before you can land,'" Evernym's Smith said. "And of course, those policy changes are changing every day." Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways are all <a href="https://simpleflying.com/qatar-iata-travel-pass-launch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expected</a> to start trialing the app in the next few weeks.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In other instances, the technology will live inside other companies' existing apps; why make someone download yet another app and add another hurdle to compliance? Instead, the experience will be rather like adding a loyalty account or TSA PreCheck number when booking a flight. Airlines and other venues restricting access will require uploading negative test results or vaccine records using one of these services. "You're going to be using the United or the Delta app, and they'll be using our solution or somebody else's, but you will do it via their app," IATA's Travel Pass lead, Alan Murray Hayden, told Protocol.</p><p>The World Health Organization is also working on its own offering, and recently convened the <a href="https://www.who.int/groups/smart-vaccination-certificate-working-group" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Smart Vaccination Certificate Working Group</a>. It's built upon the WHO's nearly century-old notion of the "yellow card" vaccination record, which first was used to document that travelers had been inoculated against diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. Evernym Chief Trust Officer Drummond Reed is part of the working group; he said there should be more to share in the coming months. </p><h3>What could go wrong?</h3><p>It's entirely possible that as more people start to get vaccinated, vaccine passports start to become the norm. You walk to work — still masked, of course — scan a QR code reader in the lobby, and are let in. You go out for lunch, and your loyalty card app has a discount for in-store shoppers verifying they're vaccinated. Your concert ticket is also tied to health pass information that you shared earlier in the day with Ticketmaster. But there are more than a few hurdles ahead of the companies rushing to turn these concepts into realities. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>First off, there's the … reality … of the real world that any digital system has to contend with. For anyone without access to the internet, digital vaccine credentials will prove difficult to acquire, though all the companies Protocol spoke with said they would offer a paper-based QR code for people who don't have smartphones. But there's also the issue of having to corral so many different stakeholders into one system, especially when some health care providers are still reliant on antiquated database systems or <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/health-care-revolution/electronic-health-records-after-coronavirus" target="_self">even paper records</a>. "The amount of inefficiency in the system is tremendous," IBM's Piscini said. </p><p>But in the U.S. at least, all vaccinators are required to report COVID-19 vaccines to their state. Piscini said that even for people who just received a paper copy of their vaccine records, systems like IBM's can likely link up to the state's immunization registry and allow people to import records to a vaccine passport.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://www.protocol.com/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc4My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzg3MTM2M30.RZtqR7F_FuXK1S24V6jVaqUZ0xOSG-gCwj00xU3fxcM/image.png?width=980" id="b43ef" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="11d8002d92c0cd6ef39b12fc7b8dccf8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">How CommonPass's app shows your records. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Image: CommonPass</small></p><p>And states are willing to help out, Pollak said, adding that CommonPass has started working with Hawaii to roll out its offering for would-be tourists. "We're seeing a lot of state governments stepping up and doing a really good job with this," Pollak said. "It would be surprising if there wasn't a coordinated federal effort very soon." That being said, while <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iceland-covid-passports-canada-1.5904828" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">many countries around</a> the world are committing to working on vaccine passports, getting a straight answer out of the U.S. government on what it's doing has proven difficult. The State Department, which maintains America's traditional, analogue passports, referred me to Homeland Security, which referred me to the White House. The acting director and chief of staff of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, Kei Koizumi, told Protocol that "OSTP can't discuss projects we are working on before they are publicly announced."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p>But even with systems in place at a federal level, there's still a fair amount of education that needs to happen before people will trust systems like these. "There's a substantial gap in understanding and knowledge of how these systems work, and people's views, in terms of who should get access to which data," Pollak said. </p><p>"We assume there's a Facebook Borg in the sky, monitoring every interaction," Smith said. "The emergence of verifiable credentials breaks down that mental model, where actually it becomes more like decentralized bits of paper that I can carry around, and no one's to know that I've been sharing this information."</p><p>"Our belief is that if you do the right thing, from a platform point of view, protecting your privacy, and giving you control and access to the platform to everybody who wants to use it," Piscini said. "I think those are very basic things that allow the core of the platform that we build to generate adoption by the individuals."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="8">
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</div></p><p>Even with a system that works, there may still be holdouts to this potential new normal. "Some people are saying, 'I will never get vaccinated,'" Piscini said, "and I don't know if the airlines are going to say, 'Well, maybe you will never fly again.'"</p>
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
Power
Everything you need to know about the Coinbase direct listing
Coinbase's IPO valuation could be the largest by a U.S. tech company since Facebook went public.
Coinbase will go public on Feb. 25.
Image: Chesnot/Getty Images
February 25, 2021
Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
Jane Seidel is Protocol's social media manager. She was previously a platform producer at The Wall Street Journal, creating mobile content and crafting alert strategy. Prior to that, she worked in audience development at WSJ and on digital editorial at NBC Universal. She lives in Brooklyn.
February 25, 2021
Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, filed its S-1 on Feb. 25 to go public via direct listing on Nasdaq. In the lead-up to the IPO, Coinbase shares traded on the Nasdaq Private Markets at $373, yielding a company valuation of over $100 billion, per Axios. If share prices remain at or above these levels, Coinbase's IPO valuation could be the largest by a U.S. tech company since Facebook went public in 2012. The company hasn't yet set a date for its trading debut.
Depending on who you ask, the Coinbase IPO could be the latest symptom of a major financial bubble or a significant milestone in the restructuring of the global financial system. Coinbase's mission is to "create an open financial system to the world." It believes the prevailing system of global finance, with the U.S. dollar serving as the global reserve currency, is outdated and inefficient. This mission pits the interests of Coinbase squarely against many of the world's most powerful nations, making regulation a grave and — if cryptos continue gaining momentum — probable risk.
What does Coinbase do?
<p>If you want to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or other crypto, you can begin the costly, labor-intensive and extremely technical process of mining. Or you can turn to a crypto exchange like Coinbase, which allows retail buyers and sellers to meet in the middle.</p><p>Coinbase also believes today's financial system relies on too many intermediaries (banks, brokers, clearinghouses, payment processors, exchanges, etc.), and that relying on this web limits access, efficiency and costs for users. The internet transformed the way we communicate and live, and Coinbase believes that the financial system has hardly been affected in the same way. By enabling anyone with an internet connection — and a bank account, with funds to invest — to easily invest in crypto assets, Coinbase aims to "democratize" access to the crypto economy. </p><p>The company isn't vastly unlike other cryptocurrency exchanges, which have come and gone since crypto trading hit the zeitgeist in 2017. General finance apps have jumped into crypto as of late, including Robinhood and Square, and crypto-specific competitors include Gemini, Kraken and Binance. Coinbase has stuck around largely because of its efficiency, but also by keeping users' personal data secure. "From the early days, we decided to focus on compliance, reaching out to regulators proactively to be an educational resource," CEO Brian Armstrong writes in the S-1. "We invested heavily in cybersecurity, built novel key storage mechanisms, and obtained a cybercrime insurance policy." </p><p>The company's exchange service is its main offering, but it also has a few other lines of business. <a href="https://commerce.coinbase.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Coinbase commerce</a> provides online retailers with software that lets them accept crypto payments (like PayPal, but for crypto). <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/card" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Coinbase Card</a> is in the early stages, giving users a physical Visa debit card and accompanying app. Coinbase even offers its own cryptocurrency, <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/usdc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">USD Coin</a>, built on Ethereum and tied to the U.S. dollar, so the price remains stable. </p><p>At the end of 2020, the company had 2.8 million monthly active users and 43 million verified users (about 6.5% of users are active, monthly). </p>Coinbase's financials
<p>Coinbase had a stellar 2020. It recorded $1.1 billion in revenue for the year, up 136% from the $483 million in revenue from 2019. This increase in revenue tracks closely with the 142% increase in trading volume between 2019 and 2020.</p><p>Coinbase derives almost all of its net revenue (96% in 2020) from transaction fees, which have been correlated with fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrencies. The rise in institutional trading volume has been a major source in revenue growth for Coinbase over the course of 2020. For instance, in Q1 2020, institutional trading volume rose to 6x the volume of Q1 2019. And even over the course of the year, institutional trading volume went from $18 billion in Q1 2020 to $57 billion in Q4 2020. Retail trading volume went from $12 billion to $32 billion in that same timeframe. </p><p>Bitcoin accounted for approximately 41% of trading volume on Coinbase in 2020, followed by Ethereum (15%) and other crypto assets (44%). </p><p>Coinbase posted a net income of $322 million in 2020, which is pretty incredible for a company that says it's choosing "to prioritize growth because we believe that global scale is central to achieving our mission and the potential of our business model." The biggest expenses in 2020 were "general and administrative," which represented 22% of total revenue, and "technology and development," which represented 21% of total revenue. In 2019, Coinbase reported a net loss of $31 million. </p>What could go wrong?
<p>The short answer: a lot.</p><p>Coinbase is driven by a techno-utopian/libertarian mission, and its long-term success is predicated on overhauling global power structures. This comes with a long list of risk factors, but some of the most significant include: regulation by a cohort of nations to protect the central banking system, loss of public confidence in cryptocurrencies and revenue loss that would come with greater stability in cryptocurrency prices. </p><p>"If the world ran on a common set of standards, that could not be manipulated by any company or country, the world would be a more fair and free place, and human progress would accelerate," Armstrong wrote in the S-1's introduction. </p><p>There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start with the bit about financial standards that "could not be manipulated by any company or country." This vision would mean the U.S. dollar loses its status as the dominant global reserve currency, <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/bretton-woods-created#:~:text=The%20Bretton%20Woods%20system%20was,gold%20at%20the%20official%20price." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a system established</a> at Bretton Woods following World War II. It would render The Federal Reserve — with its fiscal toolkit intended to provide economic stability — obsolete. With cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, there are a finite number of tokens, so quantitative easing isn't possible. </p><p>It isn't in the interest of many nations, particularly the U.S., to give up central banking control due to cryptocurrencies becoming the global reserve currency. </p><ul><li>Coinbase writes that new regulations and laws "may adversely impact the development of the crypto economy as a whole and our legal and regulatory status in particular by changing how we operate our business, how our products and services are regulated, and what products or services we and our competitors can offer, requiring changes to our compliance and risk mitigation measures, imposing new licensing requirements, or imposing a total ban on certain crypto asset transactions, as has occurred in certain jurisdictions in the past."</li><li>It also details how loss of institutional support could impact its business: "We may face difficulty establishing or maintaining banking relationships due to our banking partners' policies and some prior bank partners have terminated their relationship with Coinbase or have limited access to bank services. … In addition, financial institutions in the United States and globally may, as a result of the myriad of regulations or the risks of crypto assets generally, decide to not provide account, custody, or other financial services to us or the cryptoeconomy generally."</li></ul><p>This regulatory uncertainty hinders institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies. </p><ul><li>For instance, in January, Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates <a href="https://www.bridgewater.com/research-and-insights/our-thoughts-on-bitcoin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>: "For now, though, we do not see it as a viable storehold of wealth for large institutional investors, thanks mainly to a high degree of volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and operational constraints. Rather, we see it as more like buying an option on potential 'digital gold' — it has a wide cone of outcomes, with one path leading to it becoming a true institutionally accepted alternative storehold of wealth."</li></ul><p>Now let's tackle the first part of Armstrong's statement about a world that runs "on a common set of standards." For Coinbase to succeed, it needs cryptocurrencies to remain valuable and worth transacting.</p><ul><li>"The development of new technologies for mining, such as improved application-specific integrated circuits (commonly referred to as ASICs), or changes in industry patterns, such as the consolidation of mining power in a small number of large mining farms, could reduce the security of blockchain networks, lead to increased liquid supply of crypto assets, and reduce a crypto's price and attractiveness," Coinbase writes.</li><li>Another potential risk factor comes with "security issues, bugs, and software errors" of crypto assets that "could adversely affect its price, security, liquidity, and adoption."</li></ul><p>Finally, there's a contradiction within Coinbase's current business model that bears mentioning: Coinbase derives most of its revenue from transaction fees, which are highly correlated with fluctuations in the value of cryptos. The contradiction lies in the fact that cryptocurrency price volatility is seen as one of the primary barriers in something like Bitcoin realizing its potential as an exchange currency rather than an asset class. </p><p>Coinbase believes this isn't actually an issue, since the dynamics will change over the long term. The company writes: </p><ul><li>"Over the long term, we expect further diversification of market participants, to add support for more crypto assets, and for crypto asset use cases to expand. We believe these factors will contribute to diversification in the composition of our Trading Volume and reduce the correlation to both Bitcoin price and Crypto Asset Volatility, subsequently leading to lower volatility in transaction revenues. Further, we expect that diversifying our sources of revenue towards subscription and services revenue will contribute to less fluctuation in our results from operations."</li></ul>Who gets rich?
<p>Coinbase has divided its shares into Class A and Class B, with Class B receiving 20 votes per share and Class A receiving only one. Class B shareholders are also allowed to convert their shares to Class A at any time.</p><p>This setup makes it difficult to say precisely which entities will own Coinbase when it makes its trading debut. As of Jan. 31, 2021, some of Coinbase's largest institutional shareholders included Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, Union Square Ventures and Paradigm. Some of the largest individual shareholders included Frederick Ernest Ehrsam III (the co-founder of Coinbase), Armstrong and CPO Surojit Chatterjee.</p>What people are saying
<ul><li><strong>"The @coinbase<a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>Direct Listing will either confirm direct listings as a reasonable on-ramp for companies or kill it all together by making retail the true bag holders. If institutional investors use this period to manipulate the stock from a $54B valuation on Jan29 to $100B now... And then sell to retail at $100B or greater, it will be the ultimate form of stock manipulation. If the stock snaps back at a much lower valuation, each private txn preceding the DL seems manipulative. Good luck to all the players...I'm sitting out. The process stinks."</strong> —Chamath Palihapitiya <a href="https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1364960892958433285" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">on Twitter.</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1364960892958433285" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a><strong>"Given the Crypto Cycle, I expect Coinbase IPO to be very successful and price to pump hard. A NYSE 'exchange' security trading >$100B should help drive up Crypto Exchange tokens. I can see a bull market narrative where something like UNISWAP is compared to Coinbase in cap."</strong> — Bob Loukas <a href="https://twitter.com/BobLoukas/status/1364974896493826054" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">on Twitter</a>.</li></ul>From Your Site Articles
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- Coinbase IPO: digital money is unescapable - Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech ›
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Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
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