Coinbase, arguably the largest cryptocurrency exchange, went public today as its stock was traded on the NYSE for the first time under the ticker symbol “COIN”.

Coinbase did things a little differently than most companies that go public. Specifically, Coinbase did not have a traditional “IPO” event.

In an IPO, a company issues new stock and sells it to new investors, raising a cash for the newly public company, but paying a hefty fee to Wall Street to be the middle man.

Instead, Coinbase went public with a Direct Public Offering (DPO), which basically just allows the existing investors and Coinbase themselves to trade their shares directly with the market.

Fun fact: Ben & Jerry’s was the first company to DPO in 1984. From Investopedia:

One of the earliest notable DPOs was in 1984 by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, two entrepreneurs who needed funds for their ice cream business. They advertised their ownership stakes through local newspapers for $10.50 per share with a minimum number of 12 shares per investor. Their loyal fan base in Vermont took advantage of the offer and the company, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, raised $750,000 within the year.

Coinbase’s yearly revenue is about $8 billion dollars, while it takes about $3 billion in profit. The revenue comes in through fees of cryptocurrency exchanges so their business will basically rise and fall directly with the overall value of the cryptocurrency market.

CEO Brian Armstrong reflected a bit on building Coinbase. This dude is a powerhouse.

1/ Today is a big moment for @coinbase as we become a public company. But it’s also a big one for crypto. This all started with the Bitcoin whitepaper 12 years ago, a deceptively simple 9 page document by Satoshi Nakamoto that ignited a global movement. https://t.co/4pE006XTFP

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) April 14, 2021

The popular private messaging app, Signal, announced yesterday that they are testing cryptocurrency payments within the app.

Users of Signal (starting in the U.K.) will be able send one another money using the MobileCoin cryptocurrency payment network which uses its own currency, MOB.1

While Signal is tightly integrated with MobileCoin, Signal promises that the two services run separately and do not share data.

As always, our goal is to keep your data in your hands rather than ours; MobileCoin’s design means Signal does not have access to your balance, full transaction history, or funds. You can also transfer your funds at any time if you want to switch to another app or service.

There are quite a few “privacy coins” available to the public. It’s not clear why Signal chose to go with MobileCoin instead of a more widely adopted private cryptocurrency like Zcash or Monero.

Either way, it seems like the idea of peer to peer digital money is gaining traction in yet another app!

Following Visa, PayPal launched a checkout service today that allows people with Bitcoin balances within PayPal to spend it anywhere that accepts PayPal.

Upon payment the Bitcoin is sold by PayPal and converted to USD to pay the merchant.

Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal, awkwardly purchased a pair of size 9.5 cowboy boots with Bitcoin to showcase the new feature.

This news follows PayPal’s announcement last October when they announced that their customers could buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin from within the app.

While I am all for more opportunities for people to dip their toes in Bitcoin, something rubs me the wrong way about PayPal’s closed off strategy.

PayPal will let you buy and sell Bitcoin from within their app, but they won’t let you move your Bitcoin off the service. In this scenario, the Bitcoin you buy through PayPal are not really yours to move, save, spend, or pay people with outside the PayPal ecosystem.

This is the kind of middleman that Bitcoin was intentionally designed to work without.

On the other side of the spectrum (and follow up from last week), Tesla contributed security updates back to one of the open source projects they used to implement decentralized Bitcoin payments.

We want to thank @Tesla for submitting the disclosure that led to these fixes and helping us with remediation. Thank you for contributing to the community and helping keep our users safe. 💚

— BTCPay Server (@BtcpayServer) March 30, 2021

Tesla seems to be the darling company rallying behind the original Bitcoin vision.

Time will tell which approach works best.

Today Visa announced that they’ve settled their first payment on a blockchain. This makes Visa the first payment provider to settle a payment outside of the existing banking system.

The payment settled was in USD Coin, a cryptocurrency that always holds its value at $1 US Dollar.

This was very small step for Visa, but a very big step for the future of money.

3/6 What does this really mean? A customer who has USDC in a wallet, and a card attached to their wallet (there are now dozens of these) can spend at any Visa accepting merchant, and the USDC is used to settle the transaction with Visa instead of the legacy banking system.

— Jeremy Allaire (@jerallaire) March 29, 2021

In a not too distant future, anyone in the world will be able to store all of their money on blockchains, manage their funds with a phone (think Bitcoin like savings, USD Coin like checking), and use their trusty Visa card to pay for their morning cup of joe.

No banks required.

Banks are at risk of closing as cryptocurrencies gain traction. Innovations like this prevent Visa from the same fate.

This email isn’t about Bitcoin but it’s about blockchains and it has me really really excited.

Livepeer and Filecoin announced a pilot co-mining program in which computers that mine Livepeer’s token will also simultaneously mine Filecoin.

This is exciting. Let me explain.

Livepeer

Livepeer is a blockchain project that lets anyone stream live video over the internet.

Streaming live video is a lot of work. There are many different devices, video players, and connection speeds that request the single video feed at once.

Specialized computers have to translate video, audio, and file formats in real time, over a decent internet connection.

Using Livepeer, video streamers now have a platform run by anonymous individuals around the world, and owners of beefy computers can get paid while they sleep.

Filecoin

Filecoin is another blockchain project that lets anyone store their files over the internet.

In a similar fashion to Livepeer, miners trade hard drive space for Filecoin tokens.

With Filecoin, Livepeer miners will be able to store the video files they transcode, offering a library of videos for their anonymous customers.

Beyond

This is a smart move.

Video content will be able to be shared by anyone, anywhere in the world and cannot be censored or taken down by a company or government.

Citizens, journalists, maybe citizen-journalists, will have platforms unable to be censored or taken down by corrupted governments.

Video producers will have a better alternative to reach their audience if they are no longer happy with Netflix or Amazon in-between them.

Imagine actors getting their contracts paid automatically with every stream. Or every second their face is on a screen anywhere in the world.

Lots of new options on the horizon.

It’s a wild wild web.