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2021-04-15

Thinking of it too

Thinking About Buying Coinbase? - Here's Your Note

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{"i18n":{"language":"zh_CN"},"detailType":1,"isChannel":false,"data":{"magic":2,"id":347989646,"tweetId":"347989646","gmtCreate":1618456153885,"gmtModify":1634292815425,"author":{"id":3571890406293127,"idStr":"3571890406293127","authorId":3571890406293127,"authorIdStr":"3571890406293127","name":"Jasonlok","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9db21dc903d362d074cc761fe135b46d","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":19,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Thinking of it too</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Thinking of it too</body></html>","text":"Thinking of it too","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":5,"repostSize":1,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/347989646","repostId":1145468327,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1145468327","pubTimestamp":1618413259,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1145468327?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-14 23:14","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Thinking About Buying Coinbase? - Here's Your Note","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1145468327","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Wednesday,Coinbase shares open at $381 on Nasdaq, valuing cryptocurrency exchange at $99.6 billion.S","content":"Wednesday,Coinbase shares open at $381 on Nasdaq, valuing cryptocurrency exchange at $99.6 billion.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a50d61593da06ef4cdd7abd4eb27fc76\" tg-width=\"840\" tg-height=\"470\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Summary<ul><li>Coinbase is going public today.</li><li>Instead of reading their +300 page S-1, read our 19 page note.</li><li>We discuss: digital currencies, store of value, medium of exchange.</li><li>Plus, a deep dive into COIN's model, storage, trading, price target.</li></ul>Manole Capital Management - Bitcoin &amp; Coinbase (COIN) - April 2021What is FINTECH?Manole Capital Management exclusively focuses on the emerging FINTECH sector. For some investors, FINTECH means We define FINTECH as \"anything utilizing technology to improve an established process.\"<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2ef8760c1da50e1776b14e4c10295f65\" tg-width=\"1133\" tg-height=\"692\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a Business Insider slide on the FINTECH EcosystemFor us, the quintessential FINTECH business is the payment industry. As you can see in this FINTECH ecosystem Business Insider slide, we bolded thePayments and Remittancesspace, as that is our preferred area to invest. Others can invest in FINTECH's through Alternative Finance companies or digital banks or Insurtechs, but for us, we love the payment sector. We are attracted to the predictable, sustainable and recurring revenues of their businesses, where they essentially earn revenue per swipe economics.When most investors discuss FINTECH, they rarely (if ever) discuss the exchanges. Similar to these payment and transaction-based models, many of the exchanges also earn revenue, free cash flow and profits per transaction or trade. When it comes to trading certain assets (interest rates, equities, commodities, foreign currency, etc), there tends to be high barriers to entry or an impregnable moat around certain franchises. While many of these businesses are not recession proof, they have proven to be recession resistant.Financials:While Financials only represent 11.3% of the S&amp;P 500 (as of March 2021), roughly 3/4rd's of this sector's weight is comprised of traditional financial institutions, like banks and insurance companies. These businesses are typically credit sensitive, with opaque and complex balance sheets. To simplify the banking model, the underlying asset is the US dollar and they simply look to borrow that capital at a low fee and lend it out to borrowers at a higher rate. This spread business can generate excellent returns, but it comes with a risk. Is the bank following a solid and time-tested risk model? Are borrowers credit worthy?If an investor has exposure to the Financial sector, one should have a strong opinion on the 10-year yield. The 10-year stands at 1.7% and has significantly risen over the last several months. The Financial sector has a 5-year rolling correlation with the 10-year Treasury of 67% (per Scotiabank and Bloomberg research). We simply choose to not invest in banks and business models that don't have ourideal characteristics (click here).As we stated above, we are attracted to businesses that generate steady and recurring and free cash flow. Unfortunately, most Financials are not transaction based business models.Our Goal:This note will review digital currencies, Bitcoin and the opportunity in the exchange space. We will use our over two decades of experience following and owning exchanges to draw some parallels for this new asset class. For example, there are \"big picture\" matters concerning storage, access, theft, usage, documentation, identity, rights and dozens of other issues. Blockchain and technology advancements theoretically solve some of these problems, but unfortunately not all.Some digital currency or technology experts might find this analysis rudimentary. Others are new to this asset class and want a primer on the industry. That's our primary goal or target, is to provide an initial 30,000 foot view on digital currencies and then dive into the details of the largest (and soon to be public) exchange.As always, we strive to present our work in a very readable format. If they had the patience to read our research, we attempt to write our notes so our 80-year father or 14-year old son could easily understand. We will try our best to review the requirements to be considered a currency, volatility, pricing, digital wallets, NFT's (non-fungible tokens), stable coins and some other digital currency issues. After that, we will do a fairly deep dive into Coinbase (ticker COIN). You can read their nearly 300-page S-1 filing with theSEC (click here)or you can let us serve as your \"Cliff Notes\" version. We will discuss their business model, how they generate revenue, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as provide a framework for valuation and a price target. We hope you find this latest research from Manole Capital topical and interesting.Digital Currencies:In our 1st quarter 2021 investor newsletter, which we published on Seeking Alpha, we discussed COIN's business and its opportunity. We wrote a couple pages on the subject, but felt it deserved a much larger and dedicated piece of research.Before we dive into Coinbase, we wanted to provide our thoughts on Bitcoin and digital currencies. As we stated in the opening paragraph, Manole Capital believes the payments industry is the dominant FINTECH sector. Over the last 5 years, we have done a significant amount of work on digital currencies, trying to understand their best usage, functionality and role in the future of payments. Are digital currencies a threat to the payment networks, processors and merchant acquirers? In order to answer these questions, one has to understand how a typical payment transaction occurs. Who processes, clears and settles a card transaction?We have written dozens of articles on this subject, which can easily be viewed here. In our opinion, there are two main requirements for something to be considered a viable currency. One is that it must be a \"store of value\" and the second is that it must be a \"medium of exchange\".The Requirements To Be A Currency:In order to be a viable currency, two specific requirements are needed. One is that the currency should be a\"store of value\".This is often defined as any asset that can smoothly maintain its economic value, rather than rapidly depreciating. The other requirement is that the currency should be a\"medium of exchange\" or an instrument used to facilitate the sale, purchase or trade of goods between parties.In terms of speed and efficiency, there is no comparison when comparing the centralized payment system to Bitcoin's decentralized platform. Visa processes 1,700 transactions per second and it claims to have 40x the spare capacity, to handle 65,000 transactions per second. PayPal (PYPL) stated that during the 2020 holiday shopping season, it processed over 1,000 transactions per second. Using Bitcoin and its blockchain for global purchases and payments can process roughly 7 transactions per second.As technology improves, one could argue Bitcoin processing will improve. However, if Bitcoin were to get used for payments, the conversion of crypto holdings into US dollars will dramatically increase overall network transactions. We are big believers in the concept of...\"if it ain't broke, don't fix it!\"There are significant acceptance advantages to the existing payment ecosystem. Visa and Mastercard are accepted in over 200 countries and at over 40 million global merchants. Their payment acceptance brands stand for trust and allows billions of purchase transactions to occur each year. The Visa and Mastercard logos are known around the world, permitting the exchange of goods and services in seconds. While Bitcoin is slowly becoming more recognizable, it simply does not have the same acceptance. We believe the existing payment ecosystem handles the \"medium of exchange\" process well. The overall payment landscape is a well-oiled machine, that involves three to four parties, approving transactions in in roughly 1 to 2 seconds.We have discussed the long-term opportunity for a FINTECH company or two to create a \"Super App Holy Grail\". This would be allowing customers to transact with their mobile phone, in whatever currency they wish, at all global merchants. Getting consumers to get rid of their leather wallets is easier said than done. Even though we consider ourselves to be fairly technologically savvy, we still have a wallet that looks a lot like Seinfeld's George Costanza's.Several companies have recently announced their intentions to help spur Bitcoin acceptance. On March 30th, 2021, PYPL announced the launch of its \"Checkout with Crypto\" option. Participating merchants (initially ½ of PYPL's 29 million) can offer their customers the ability to pay for purchases using Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum or Bitcoin Cash. How will this work? Once a PYPL customer purchases or stores crypto holdings in their PYPL digital wallet, he/she will be permitted to use those funds at checkout. When a transaction occurs, PYPL users will see the option to apply their balance to complete a purchase. When customers choose this payment option, PYPL will exchange their crypto for US dollars through its clearinghouse partner, Paxos. The transaction will occur based upon a spot market rate, with a 50 basis point spread built in. PYPL will then remit payment (in US dollars) to the merchant, to satisfy the exchange of goods or services.While this sounds easy, there are significant hurdles. Certain details are still emerging, but customers using this service must buy their crypto within their PYPL digital wallet. This will satisfy PYPL's adherence to Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines, but it doesn't solve all potential hiccups. The four cryptocurrencies PYPL said customers can use, are likely to cause problems. The SEC and IRS have not deemed these to be currencies, but instead, consider them capital assets. If they were to be used for payment, the underlying client will potentially have capital gain taxes, if their PYPL digital wallet has paper gains. If you are making a $20 purchase at Walgreen's, we don't believe customers are wanting to consider the tax ramifications of using their Bitcoin balance in their digital wallet. That potential $20 purchase could potentially cost you a tax liability of 100%.Even if we ignore the large tax issues, there are additional worries. So, if the cryptocurrency in your digital wallet is going to be used to fund purchases, who is going to pay for it? Merchants will have to pay for the cost of converting cryptocurrencies into US dollars, whatever that cost might be. There will be the traditional merchant discount rates applied, but this will ultimately be another cost for merchants to bear. Besides a company like Tesla, that has a dynamic CEO, do you envision merchant's dying to accept additional costs to help their customers transact? Especially when cards are so ubiquitous?So,Teslahas decided it will accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. What does this really mean? If a consumer has a sizeable gain in Bitcoin and wishes to use it to purchase a \"free\" Tesla, there are serious tax consequences. Just like selling an appreciated stock, where a consumer has to pay capital gains taxes, Bitcoin would be under the same burden. Until the IRS classifies Bitcoin as a currency, and not property, this tax problem will remain.The second problem comes if the Tesla buyer decides to return his/her new vehicle. Tesla reserves the right to pay the consumer back in cash, worth the original purchase price, not in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin jumps in value since the original transaction date, the consumer would be negatively impacted. If Bitcoin falls in price, Tesla could return a depreciated Bitcoin to the car buyer. Are there hundreds of thousands of consumers yearning to purchase a Tesla with Bitcoin? We doubt there's too many, especially if they are aware of the tax issues.Last week, Visa announced it would use various FINTECH API's (application programming interface) offered by cryptocurrency custodian and privately-held Anchorage. Visa plans to settle transactions using US dollar stablecoin, powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Once again, this is exciting news, but will likely encounter problems and take a while to come to fruition.Before one uses Bitcoin to transact at the POS (point of sale), be actually believe it can become an excellent opportunity for money transfer. Western Union is about to turn 170 years old and can be considered the original FINTECH company. However, moving paper currency around the world is not terribly technologically advanced. Visa has launched an expanded version of itsDirectplatform, which will allow for cross border disbursements. Visa's platform supports real-time domestic and cross-border person-to-person, business-to-small business and business-to-consumer use cases, so the options are endless. Bill Sheley is the global head of Visa Direct, and he stated, \"Visa is innovating to give financial institutions, governments, individuals and businesses new ways to pay and get paid beyond the card.\"On the \"store of value\" front, the total addressable market for assets is enormous. For example, art and collectibles are a $20 trillion market, gold is $10 trillion, real estate is $200 trillion, bonds are $100 trillion and equities are another $30 trillion.50% of gold is used in jewelry and another 1/3 is used in electronics. While gold used to back fiat currencies, Britain dropped the gold standard in 1931. The US followed suit in 1933 and totally abandoned the gold standard in 1973. There are additional issues to consider like fixed or variable supply, as well as volatility concerns.We agree that digital currencies are becoming a feasible \"store of value\". In our opinion, digital currencies have significant challenges to becoming a \"medium of exchange\". With that caveat, the opportunity for the crypto-economy and digital currencies to thrive is still open ended and vast.Inflation:The world is always looking for additional asset classes and stores of value, especially as governments keep the currency printing presses running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.Last year, the Federal Reserve printed an unprecedented amount of dollars, roughly 1/5 th of all US dollars ever printed. On a daily basis, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces over $500 million over 38 million notes.If you are the United States and the dollar is considered the dominant global currency, your perception of Bitcoin (or any digital assets) should be of concern. The ability of countries to simply print money should inherently be inflationary, yet Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell continues to seek to get the US at and above 2% annually.A couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration announced an infrastructure bill, called the American Jobs Plan, with a $2 trillion spending target. In March of 2021, US government passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. This followed a December of 2020 stimulus package of $900 billion, as well as a CARES Act in March 2020 bill of $2.2 trillion. We are not making a statement about the merits of any of these packages and stimulus programs. We simply are trying to point out the massive amount of money that is getting printed.Many cryptocurrency bulls will cite inflationary worries with fiat currencies for why their digital cryptocurrencies assets are undervalued. We understand this argument, but always come back to an initial framework. If you are the US or the European Union or Chinese government, would you be able to control your society if there wasn't a viable currency in place? Would economies function without government control of its fiat currency? If cryptocurrencies become widely accepted and are considered a better version of payment, would governments be able to function? If the US couldn't issue additional debt to fund its spending initiatives, would it even exist? We just don't believe government regulators will allow certain cryptocurrencies to thrive, especially if it threatens their sovereign currencies.We tend to look at this as a simple supply and demand equation. While Bitcoin has currently issued 18.7 million tokens, there is only a maximum of 21 million that can be created. That fixed supply is counter to some governments. For example, there are countries that have taken the printing of fiat currency too far. Zimbabwe is but one example of runaway inflation. Here's a picture of one of their 100 trillion bills. Yes, that's a 100 trillion. Do you want to be a trillionaire? Simply buy one on eBay for $8.99,by clicking here.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/375ab15b324158141f0eceee4633e5ca\" tg-width=\"900\" tg-height=\"900\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: This is a picture of Zimbabere's currency, that I took on myiPhoneAs this Piper Sandler chart shows, Bitcoin now has a market capitalization of roughly $1 trillion. If we look at the top 10 digital assets by market capitalization, the vast majority of market share falls to just 2 currencies.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4f0caa7a9dbd54216c5e67fb83199d42\" tg-width=\"859\" tg-height=\"576\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a Piper Sandler slide/chartIt is estimated that Bitcoin is over 55% of all cryptocurrency market capitalization and Ethereum is roughly 11%. Cryptocurrencies like Tether, Binance Coin, Stellar, Cardano, Litecoin have a modest following and just 1% to 2% market share (all under $50 million in market cap).Digital currencies should be considered assets, as they can be represented digitally, dynamically transmitted, and stored safely in the cloud. However, digital assets and cryptocurrencies have a long way to go to become used in our globally interconnected economies.Rules &amp; Regulations:In a perfect world, we think all assets should trade 365 days a year and 24 hours a day. In this hypothetical environment, assets should immediately process and settle and fees to transact should be modest. Why does the NYSE only officially operate from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm EST Monday through Friday (and not on holidays)? There are trades that occur pre-market and post-market hours, but liquidity and volumes are sparse. The simple answer is that this is the way it has always occurred and why should we change something that isn't broken.The traditional exchanges have always had a set period of time where they are \"open for business\", but this is changing. For example, the technology backbone of the CME Group (ticker CME) is called Globex. It essentially permits 24/7 trading to occur on its electronic platform for equities, interest rates, commodities, foreign exchange and other assets. After years of investing in international growth, roughly 1/5 th of all volumes come from outside of the US.In order to have access to Globex, there are rules one needs to adhere to, as exchanges are heavily regulated entities. Just like banks need to conduct AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer) due diligence on its customer base, the exchanges need to follow strict guidelines enforced by their regulators.As of today, we believe there are over 50 distinct blockchain protocols which support more than 7,500 various digital assets. Unfortunately, the financial systems are not known as entities that are quick to adopt change and technology. The world has embraced the internet, as a revolutionary and transformational platform. However, financial systems are not comfortable seamlessly exchanging data, information and assets. There are numerous activities like cross border payments or peer-to-peer payments that are ideally suited for technological advancements, but rules and regulations exist to stymie growth.The goal of an open and transparent financial system is honorable, but not terribly realistic. In terms of managing one's assets, especially money, the process can be cumbersome.Volatility:If we accept cryptocurrency as a digital asset, we then want to better understand how value is determined, where it can be stored and how best to process and handle its exchange. With decentralized assets, the network allows participants to transact without intermediaries. Who sets the value and determines price?The most notable cryptocurrency is Bitcoin and it has a CAGR of over 150%, from 2013 to 2020. In 2017, it rose 1,318%, but then fell by (72.6%) in 2018. In 2020, it rose over 302% and it currently is up well over 50% this year. Since January of 2017, there have been 5 corrections of 50% of more in Bitcoin, so it can be wildly volatile.We are slowly getting comfortable with digital assets and cryptocurrencies as a \"store of value\" and believe they will become a viable asset in one's diversified portfolio. Each individual or entity needs to determine their own risk and reward framework, so cryptocurrency might be 10 basis points or 10% of one's portfolio.Opinions on Bitcoin are changing every day. Back in 2018, the CEO of Blackrock (Larry Fink) called Bitcoin a currency \"for money launderers.\" A year earlier, JP Morgan CEO, Jaime Dimon called Bitcoin a \"fraud\" and threated to fire any bank employee who dealt with the currency. Fast forward to today: Blackrock (in January 2021) enabled two of its mutual funds to purchase Bitcoin, and a JP Morgan analyst recently published that he thinks Bitcoin could rise to $146,000.Recently, large institutional interest has boosted the price of certain digital assets. High profile investors like John Tudor Jones (May 2020) and Stanley Druckenmiller have made sizeable purchases of various digital currencies. Other companies like Microstrategy (August 2020) and Tesla (Feb 2021) have made sizeable transactions for their firm's balance sheet.Stable Coins:A stable coin is simply a digital asset that is attempts to lower volatility by pegging itself to an actual fiat currency or physical asset (ex: gold). For example, Tether has a market capitalization of over $40 billion, is backed by US dollars and it's the largest cryptocurrency stable coin. One of the risks associated with stable coins is ensuring that the proper amount of fiat currency is held in reserve to match the amount of stable coins in circulation.In prior official commentary, the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia - Elvira Nabiullina - stated that Russa was against any form of private currency, as it threatened financial sovereignty. Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs also was considering seizing all digital currencies and claiming cryptocurrencies criminal activity. Now, in January 2021, the Bank of Russia began to test a ruble-based stable coin. While starting cautiously, the Russian Central Bank is exploring the possibility of issuing its own digital currency. There are numerous countries that are investigating the process of issuing CBDC's or Central Bank Digital Currencies. China has studied the process of issuing a digital yuan, the European Central Bank is looking into a digital Euro.Other governments and regulators have highlighted the risks of digital currencies. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority called crypto assets \"high risk, speculative investments\" where investors \"should be prepared to lose all their money.\" US Treasury Secretary (and former Federal Reserve Chairwoman) Janet Yellen has warned on investing in digital currencies too. Just a week ago, India's Reserve Bank took a fairly bearish tone on digital currencies. Rumors are that India is looking to pass a law outlawing cryptocurrencies and making anyone trading or holding them punishable with sizeable fines. India's Finance minister is Nirmala Sitharaman and she said India's Cabinet will shortly issue a final ruling on the matter and that the governments ruling is \"under preparation and nearing completion\".Will additional countries look to make cryptocurrencies illegal? These type of comments act as a governor to adoption and change. Politicians and governments are worried about losing control of their economies. Statements like this are further evidence that governments will remain a headwind. We aren't going to put this in the realm of a new \"space race\", but the country that embraces this technology first might have an early advantage versus those that are afraid of change.Digital Currency Conclusion:This quick digital currency discussion was created to set the framework for an analysis of Coinbase (ticker COIN). Will digital currencies replace traditional payment systems? We do not believe it will, but continued adoption and traction in digital currencies is noticeable.Is Bitcoin poised to climb higher, or will it crash? We simply don't know. What we do know is that we prefer to own the medium where these \"assets\" trade. We would compare this to the Gold Rush of the mid-1800's. Back in 1849, owning Levi Strauss made a fortune selling picks, pans and shovels to '49ers looking for gold. Back then, some would say, \"There's gold in those mountains.\"Nowadays, there's a huge opportunity in the collection of data and information. We truly have no idea what the price of Bitcoin will do, except we know that it will be very volatile. As we know, volatility leads to trading, which should equate to profits for the exchanges. Speaking of exchanges, let's now discuss another exchange and upcoming FINTECH direct listing - COIN.Introduction to Coinbase (ticker COIN):The stated goal of COIN is \"to create an open financial system for the world.\" While this is altruistic, it seems to be fairly broad based goal. It is noble to strive to create a financial system that is transparent for all mankind. It might be more prudent to strive to provide an end-to-end infrastructure and technology platform for all types of cryptocurrencies.From our perspective, it might be judicious for COIN to focus its attention on providing value adding services for all types of digital currencies. If COIN becomes the dominant exchange where anyone can easily and securely send and receive Bitcoin, it will thrive. If COIN can create an efficient and accessible marketplace for the emerging digital assets community, it can be a massive success. There are hundreds of platforms that want to democratize access to the crypto-economy, but COIN (as the oldest and most recognizable brand) seems to have an early lead in this race.Coinbase:COIN was started in 2012 and it has built a trusted platform for accessing various crypto currencies. Using blockchain technology, COIN has simplified the user experience and reduced the complexity of purchasing, selling and holding digital currencies. In its early days, COIN was primarily just used for sending and receiving cryptocurrencies. Then, it became a trusted platform for those seeking to invest in various currencies. We liken this period as COIN's realization that it needed to become an \"exchange\" or intermediary between buyers and sellers. It has since launched cryptocurrency payments, distribution capabilities, storage, borrowing and lending services.As this chart from COIN shows, there are over 45 different cryptocurrencies investors can purchase and another 90 that can be stored at COIN.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f91cd70c100e3a8159938dd730935867\" tg-width=\"767\" tg-height=\"319\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1However, two primary digital currencies dominate COIN's total trading volumes. In 2020, Bitcoin represented 41% of COIN's trading volumes and 15% came from Ethereum. While this 56% is a decline from 2019 levels (72% of the total mix), we envision both will remain the primary digital currencies traded on COIN.Revenue:Over the last several years, COIN has materially grown its revenue. In 2019, revenue $533 million and it impressively grew to $1.3 billion last year. As we show in our pie chart, in 2020, COIN's $1.28 billion of revenue grew 130% year-over-year and was a mix of 86% Transactional, 3% Subscription &amp; Services and 11% \"Other\".On April 6th, COIN reported 1st quarter 2021 results and the metrics were eye popping. Last quarter, COIN generated $1.8 billion in revenue, which exceeded the prior two years combined.In 2020, 86% of COIN's total revenue wasTransactionalin nature. This means revenue was derived from sending, receiving, investing and spending cryptocurrencies. When it comes to Transactional revenue, we like to look at the fee as a percentage of total volume traded.COIN provided this diagram and it shows exactly what products are inside of each of its revenue classifications. The remaining 15% of total revenue came fromSubscription &amp; Services,which COIN classifies as paying, distributing, storage, and from borrowing and lending cryptocurrencies.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b0466f39ad66c6fefeaeee25b50847fb\" tg-width=\"922\" tg-height=\"716\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1Storing earns custodial fee revenue, which we will dissect in a couple of pages. Staking revenue comes from validation on a proof-of-stake blockchain transaction. License revenue is generated from users of its Analytics services. Lastly, COIN can earn campaign revenue or distribution fees when its constructs educational materials for issuers. For cryptocurrency issuers, COIN earns revenue for helping the platform engage with its users, in the form of educational videos or tasks, when cryptocurrencies are attempting to widen their distribution, marketing and acceptance. While these ancillary services are nice, the real opportunity is trading.Customer Type:In its S-1 regulatory filing, COIN showed its product portfolio, separated from retail users, institutions and other ecosystem partners. One has to understand that different clients are paying different rates. Over the last 8 quarters, this revenue rate has averaged 0.61%, with a high of 0.80% in the 1st quarter of 2019 and a low of 0.50% in the 4th quarter of 2020.Looking at the last 8 quarters, we can clearly see that both retail and institutional trading volumes have exploded higher. It is interesting to see that Retail was bigger at $45 billion in the 1 st quarter of 2018 than it was at the end of last year at $32 billion. Also, one can see that Institutional trading volumes have gone from $11 billion in the 1 st quarter of 2018 and now are over $57 billion.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6b80fa39db4f3163a635e88da58642ed\" tg-width=\"846\" tg-height=\"524\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1COIN has different fees depending on whether or not the client is retail or institutional, as well as whether or not the client uses Coinbase or Coinbase Pro, which we will discuss this later on, in our pricing section.Trading volumes:In terms of exchanges, it all comes down to volumes. Crypto exchange volumes have soared, because of strong interest from both retail and institutional clients. This type of growth will not continue, but volatility tends to drive overall volumes.Looking at this Compass table, one can clearly see that volumes noticeably increased in 2018, following the rise of Bitcoin in December of 2017. What happened in late 2017 that helped drive future trading volumes? Well, CBOE and CME both launched Bitcoin future contracts that month.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7170f3967e17422584307fc937c403b5\" tg-width=\"689\" tg-height=\"691\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassSo far in 2021, COIN has experienced 298% growth in ADV (average daily volumes). What did Bitcoin increase last year? Just over 300%. There's clearly a very high correlation between Bitcoin's recent price and COIN's future ADV.One of our favorites aspects of investing in the exchanges is the ability to simply model the businesses in Excel. The large, publicly-traded exchanges provide wonderful transparency for investors, by posting daily volumes. We liken this to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley providing real-time insights into their prop desk trading results. You shouldn't hold your breath for that level of transparency, right?Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Bitcoin:In the real estate business, the common phrase is that the 3 most important items are \"location, location and location.\" For digital currency exchanges, we believe the 3 most important products are \"Bitcoin, Bitcoin and more Bitcoin.\"On COIN's platform, the volumes tend to be concentrated in a few different currencies. In 2019, BTC or Bitcoin was 58% of COIN's trading volumes, but that fell to 41% in 2020. ETH or Ethereum was 14% in 2019 and that grew slightly last year to 15% of COIN's total. The biggest category jump came from \"other\", which was 18% in 2019 and grew to 44% last year.Having multiple products to transact in is obviously key, but COIN is cryptocurrency dependent. Yes, tokens like Dogecoin might come in and out of favor, but COIN is dependent upon higher Bitcoin and Ethereum prices.A great aspect to owning CME is their transparency. Not only does CME provide daily ADV, but they provide details on open interest. We like to follow open interest, as it is a leading indicator of future volumes. Also, CME provides details on large open interest holders (called LOIH's) or those owners of a minimum of $7.5 million of Bitcoin futures. Over the last couple of months, CME has hit all-time highs in volumes in Bitcoin futures trading. This year, Bitcoin futures contracts on the CME have averaged 13,800 contracts per day, up 42% year-over-year.Like CME, COIN has invested heavily in its technology to give its customers access to a deep pool of cryptocurrency liquidity. Like we just described, this liquidity can act as a virtuous cycle. Volumes beget more volumes and leading more customers onto the platform.Pricing:We focus on the trading volume of an exchange, but also try to model how revenues are generated from this volume. Each trade does not generate the same level of revenue, as different traders tend to pay different prices.In derivative exchange land, we often look at commission prices as RPC or rate per contract. For example, CME charges $0.478 a contract to trade interest rates, $0.545 to trade equities, $0.764 to trade foreign currency, $1.397 to trade metals, $1.336 to trade agricultural commodities and $1.124 to trade energy. Within each product, prices can vary. For example, WTI crude is a different trading price versus natural gas contracts. While CME is trying to get more retail customers into trading futures and options, the vast majority of its volumes are from institutions.At COIN, there are different fees for different clients. COIN has two main fee structures, one called Coinbase Pro and the other called Coinbase Prime. Here's a quick look at the pricing tiers, as discussed in the S-1 filing, based upon whether or not a client is taking or providing liquidity (called taker fee and maker fee).<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/cba2058d6aac36d1f5fa59d2261be3c1\" tg-width=\"527\" tg-height=\"649\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassTransaction revenue, as a percentage of total volumes traded, has averaged 0.61% over the last 8 quarters. Over these 2 years, retail client transactional revenue has increased from 1.27% up to 1.47%. For institutional clients, revenues as a percentage of volumes traded has fallen from 0.07% down to 0.05%. Clearly, retail customers pay significantly more than institutional clients to trade.Also, unlike transacting in a stock, COIN calls its transaction based revenue \"staking\" revenue. This is earned from transaction validation on a proof-of-stake blockchain, when COIN's nodes successfully creates or validates a certain block. This revenue is recognized when the rewards are available for transfer and at the point when the block creator or validation is complete. The metrics that determine the staking revenue are driven by quantity, price and rewards rate.Customers:The strengths of COIN's platform seem to be its vast and extensive network of contacts. COIN is leveraging its trusted brand to attract those that want access to transact or store cryptocurrencies.COIN's growth strategy is based upon driving more customers onto its platform and becoming the de-facto platform for cryptocurrency. Just like the online brokers did in the 1990's, the key to growth was adding new accounts and clients to the platform.In this COIN chart, one can see the exceptional growth in verified users or those that have \"demonstrated an interest\" in COIN's platform. In addition to these users, there are another 7,000 institutional customers, across roughly 100 countries.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0b0ae20183f76b5f50213a6fba41d49f\" tg-width=\"671\" tg-height=\"663\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1These verified users have registered for an account and confirmed either their email address or a phone number. In our model, we are not terribly interested in tracking verified users as a key metric. While it is nice to know who interested in cryptocurrencies, it is much more important to understand who is willing to transact.As you can see in this Compass Point chart, COIN has 2.8 million MTU or monthly transacting users. In order to be considered a customer needs to have logged in and transacted one time, over a 28-day rolling period.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/37e82feeeec96702e21745ad5bdc1c48\" tg-width=\"706\" tg-height=\"416\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassIt is interesting to see that there were 2.7 million MTU's in the 1 st quarter of 2018 and 2.8 million MTU's at the end of last year. Over those 2 years, MTU's dramatically declined and then lifted. As of today, COIN has roughly 3 million MTUs, which was up +180% year-over-year, but we like to think of it as only 7% of its verified total accounts.This reminds us of the online brokerage business, back in the 1990's and 2000's. For years, the primary goal of marketing executives at the online brokers was to generate more and more accounts. The theory was that with new accounts, clients would eventually look to consolidate their relationships with one or possibly two firms. Once an account was opened, the goal was to increase wallet share from that satisfied customer.For online brokerages, driving customers typically comes from TV advertising. One cannot watch CNBC or Bloomberg or Fox Business without seeing advertisements for Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E*Trade, Fidelity or Interactive Brokers. Robinhood was very successful in opening up investment accounts for the emerging Gen-Z demographic, but its well-publicized issues in late January (regarding prohibiting \"meme stocks\" purchases) might impact its torrid account growth.How does COIN plan on increasing its exposure and customer base? Our guess is that it will look to increase its marketing spend. The ROI or return on investment of TV marketing is somewhat opaque. We anticipate COIN learning from its foray into marketing and advertising, with some successes, as well as some failures.The best avenue to increase accounts and customers is to offer a product that cannot be easily replicated. COIN can continue its account growth by launching new and innovative products, as well as offering access to new cryptocurrencies.While BTC or Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency today, maybe there will be a new and exciting cryptocurrency in vogue tomorrow. Over the last few months, Dogecoin has garnered significant attention and media coverage. While we shake our head and do not understand the fascination with this cryptocurrency, the goal for COIN is to attract and become the go to platform for those that wish to transact. COIN needs to expand its support of all digitally native cryptocurrencies and help to tokenize new assets.Storage:While the vast majority of COIN's revenue is trading based, COIN does earns subscription and service revenue when customers choose to safely store their cryptocurrencies on its platform.COIN is one of the most trusted exchanges in the crypto space and operate as a \"qualified custodian\". This means that they have a separate company, called Coinbase Custody, which operates as a standalone, independently-capitalized business. Under New York State Banking Law, Coinbase Custody is considered a fiduciary. All digital assets are segregated and held in a trust. COIN has never suffered a hack that led to loss of funds and cannot afford to ever have that breached.As you can see in this COIN asset chart shows, there has been excellent growth on the platform. At the end of 2020, COIN had $90.3 billion in assets on its platform, which was up +432% year-over-year.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/fa49892f328f6968397671bfc6bfbab1\" tg-width=\"887\" tg-height=\"689\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1Of these assets, 70% was from Bitcoin and another 13% were Ethereum. Clearly, those two currencies represent the bulk of COIN's platform assets.Wallets:The leather wallet in your pocket holds a combination of cash and credit/debit cards. However, cryptocurrencies and tokens need to be kept in a crypto wallet. \"Hot wallets\" are connected to the internet and are considered much less secure, while \"cold wallets\" are kept offline. Most cryptocurrency custodians employ \"cold\" storage to safely hold a client's digital assets.Acting as a cold cryptocurrency custodian (say that 3x fast), COIN derives fee revenue based on a percentage of the daily value of customer accounts. The assets under custody are a function of quantity, price and type of cryptocurrency asset.Custody:In addition to hot versus cold wallets, there are two primary ways to store your Bitcoin. The first is called self-custody. This is when an individual or entity has complete control of their Bitcoin. This entails maintaining and controlling your own private key. When it comes to Bitcoin storage, there is a popular self-custody mantra that says, \"not your keys, not your coins\". This implies that if you do not control the private key for your Bitcoin, it is not truly your Bitcoin.The second way to store your Bitcoin is to outsource it to a trusted custodian, like Kraken, Coinbase, Anchorage or others. In this case, the custodian stores your Bitcoin for you and they have control over its private key. Kraken is security focused and has an time-tested private key management practice. In its 10-years of existence, it has never been hacked.Whether one decides to self-custody or use an outsourced custody provider for storing your Bitcoin, two critical issues must be discussed. The first is trust. Do you trust the custodial firm that holds your Bitcoin? If one self-custodies, they bear the risk of lost private keys, break-ins or natural disasters. On the other hand, self-custody ensures you control your own Bitcoin. The obvious downside of self-custody is that one can lose all of your Bitcoin, if it is not stored properly.Do you trust the bank that holds your checking account or brokerage firm that holds your stocks? US financial institutions are some of the most highly regulated companies in the world and most have proven themselves to be good custodians of our assets. Maybe we can exclude Lehman Brothers and AIG from that statement, but it is fair statement for the other 10,000+ financial institutions in the US.Does trusting a firm called Kraken, with millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin, sound like a sound idea? Some might prefer to custody with a firm like Bank of New York, which announced in March of 2021, that it intends to enter the Bitcoin custody business. However, does Bank of New York have the technological expertise and security protocols of newer entrants like Kraken? With a random name like Manole Capital, we clearly don't place too much emphasis on one's name. We do however appreciate 3 rd party, independent industry rankings. Kraken has been voted the #1 most secure cryptocurrency exchange by ICO Ratings.The second key issue to consider is protection and safety. Cryptocurrency custodians and exchanges are a prime target for hackers. There are hundreds and potentially thousands of thieves looking to steal your Bitcoin private key. PayPal and Robinhood recently sent warnings instructing their clients to install two factor authentication onto their digital wallets / account. Also, governments can force companies to freeze funds, if they perceive illegal activity or fraudulent behavior.Trusting someone else to store and manage your Bitcoin is a challenging decision. There have been a few custody firms to have disastrous results (i.e. Mt. Gox), but there are also extremely competent businesses that can trusted to hold your cryptocurrencies. For us, we prefer an expert store our assets, as opposed to keeping it under the proverbial mattress.Characteristics:As we mentioned earlier, there are certainideal characteristicswe look for in our investments. COIN has a strong brand name and dominates its cryptocurrency niche. Its platform is scalable and by leveraging certain blockchain advancements, COIN can provide a safe and secure environment for its customers.We often look for our companies to have dominant market shares, high barriers to entry and what Warren Buffett calls a \"moat around the franchise\". Regardless of industry, we always focus on an investment's market share. In terms of COIN's cryptocurrency market share, it has risen from 4.5% in 2018 to 8.3% in 2019 up to 11.0% in 2020.For exchanges, there is typically 1 or 2 firms that dominate the trading of a specific asset. These exchanges have the best liquidity and the tightest bid/ask spreads. For example, the CME dominates US interest rate trading, as well as WTI crude trading. Intercontinental Exchange dominates the Brent crude marketplace. Once an exchange begins to control trading for a certain asset, it is very difficult for a competitor to steal market share. Some try to lower trading pricing and commissions, but this usually is only temporary. Investors are always seeking best execution and will usually return to the marketplace with the most liquidity and tightest bid/ask spreads. From an exchange standpoint, this is definition of dominant market share, competitive advantage or possessing a moat around your franchise.Ideally, COIN is looking to become the one-stop shop for those wishing to buy, sell and/or store cryptocurrency. COIN has many of the desirable characteristics we look for in an investment, but it does have risks.Risk #1: BitcoinFor a business like COIN, there are literally dozens of risks. For starters, cryptocurrencies are volatile and we anticipate COIN's stock will be highly correlated to the price of BTC, Bitcoin and other important cryptocurrencies.As we have mentioned, the underlying price of these cryptocurrencies helps to determine COIN's revenue and profits. Possibly the biggest risk for owning COIN stock will be its reliance and dependency on rising Bitcoin and Ethereum prices.Risk #2: CompetitionOn the retail front, COIN has numerous competitors. For example, both Square's Cash App (36 million users) and PayPal (375 million accounts) are offering mobile-based wallets, primarily to retail clients. Customers can purchase various cryptocurrencies on both Square and PayPal and store them for free.Over time, we expect both of these firms to begin to allow wallet holders to transact in whatever currency he/she wishes. For example, a customer can use their Square Cash App wallet to transact at over 3 million Square merchant acquiring locations. This mobile wallet will permit credit or debit transactions, but might also permit the user to utilize their Bitcoin balance. There are numerous issues that still need to be resolved on this front, but this is what we have been calling \"closing-the-loop\".Risk #3: RegulationsExchanges are highly regulated entities and they must learn to engage with their regulators for the benefit of all market participants. COIN is subject to a regulated environment, but the rules and landscape are dynamic. Unlike US financials, with a known regulator, the laws and rules cryptocurrencies are subject to are constantly changing. As COIN moves more of its business to international markets, it will have additional governmental issues to deal with.The new SEC Chairman is Gary Gensler. Gensler was the head of the CFTC from May 2009 to January 2014 and was the primary regulator for the derivative exchanges. In his tenure at the CFTC, Gensler attempted to write rules and regulations for the swap markets, as suggested in the Dodd Frank Act of 2010 (following the Financial Crisis). Now that Gensler is at the SEC, one of his first challenges is what to do about regulating and providing oversight on Bitcoin and other digital currencies. He is not new to digital currencies, as he was a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management after his stint at the CFTC. He primarily taught about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.As of today, there are only a few crypto funds available to investors. Grayscale has over $38 billion in assets and is the sponsor of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTC:GBTC), which is provides Bitcoin exposure for qualified investors. GBT investors have a $25,000 minimum investment and currently pay a 2.5% management fee.Many firms (Skybridge Capital, Valkyrie Digital, Fidelity Investments, VanEck, WisdomTree, etc) have announced their intention to offer Bitcoin ETF's. attempted to get the SEC to approve Bitcoin ETF's. As of now, the SEC has not approved any of these filings, but it will ultimately have to make a decision on the subject. Earlier SEC rejections were based upon problems with volatility, transparency, market surveillance and market and price manipulation. We expect a positive Bitcoin ETF to be approved by the SEC in 2021.In addition to SEC regulation, we anticipate the Federal Reserve to explore the subject too. Chairman Jay Powell, in official Congressional testimony, has officially stated that the Fed is looking into the idea of a \"fully digital dollar\". This type of \"Fed coin\" would likely need Congressional and White House approval and it is very much in the early innings of its examination. Chairman Powell is still dealing with the ramifications of a global pandemic and a soft US economy, so a CBDC might not be his first or even second priority right now.Risk #4: SecurityAs with any exchange, security and safety is paramount. We anticipate that COIN will be subject to thousands of cybersecurity attacks. Hackers, criminals and even foreign countries might find it worthwhile to breach COIN's platform. COIN's valuation is dependent upon it keeping its first-mover advantage and its reputation as a dominant cryptocurrency custodian. Security, for customers and partners, cannot be underestimated and COIN will have a very large target on its back.Scale &amp; EBITDA Margins:For us, we always like to model in operating or EBITDA margins, as well as free cash flow for our exchanges. In 2020, EBITDA margins for the largest exchanges were impressive. Here is a table of the dominant four exchanges and their EBITDA margins last year, as compared to COIN. Looking at the 2020 EBITDA margins of its publicly-traded exchange peers, provides interesting insights. Last year, CBOE posted 68% EBITDA margins and CME and ICE each posted margins in the 62% to 63% range. Despite trailing their competitors, Nasdaq had impressive EBITDA margins of 55%, that would be the envy of most companies. One key takeaway is that all of the exchanges are generating impressive margins with excellent leverage and scale opportunities.Exchanges: CBOE CME ICE NDAQ vs COIN2020 EBITDA Margins 68% 62% 63% 55% 41%These exchanges have spent billions of dollars building out a scalable platform, that has enormous operating leverage. Each and every transaction that occurs is extremely high incremental margins. Most do not provide guidance on future or forward revenue, but they do have decent insight into expenses. The CME typically will provide forward expense guidance in the 2% to 5% range each year. Expenses don't dramatically increase each and every year, but do modestly rise.How does COIN compare? Well, COIN is still constructing its exchange and heavily investing in its infrastructure. Last year, technology and development expenses were $271.7 million or 21% of COIN's total revenue. In 2019, this expense line item was 35% of revenue.In 2020, COIN's expenses grew 50% year-over-year to $868.5 million. At this early stage of its lifecycle, we are pleasantly surprised to see that COIN is generating positive operating leverage (expense growth less than revenue growth).As you can see in this Compass Point chart, over the last 8 quarters, COIN's Adjusted EBITDA margins have steadily improved. Are they peaking or at an all-time high? No, but the best part about COIN's current margin trajectory is where we see it going.<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/44d11356cbdbc81549a9f5422e6e0e4f\" tg-width=\"567\" tg-height=\"426\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassIn its S-1, Brian Armstrong (COIN's CEO) stated a focus on operating profits, as it tries to manage its expense growth. He said, \"We may earn a profit when revenues are high, and we may lose money when revenues are low.\" He then went on to state that \"our goal is to roughly operate the company at break even, smoothed out over time.\"This has proven to be true, when one considers that COIN generated $533 million in revenue in 2019, but lost $30m of profit that year. Then, in 2020, COIN produced $527 million of EBITDA on $1.2 billion of revenue. Clearly, the exchanges can generate very impressive profit margins, at scale.The real benefit for the exchanges comes when volatility spikes and volumes soar. As this happens, assuming the exchanges properly manages this rising volatility, profitability climbs. As more and more volumes transact on a platform, free cash flow (and margins) is very attractive. Operating margins at its other publicly-traded exchanges have been high for years and do not fluctuate significantly from year-to-year. As revenues surprise to the upside, because volatility spikes, these exchanges typically reward their shareholders with buybacks and special dividends. As much more mature businesses, these exchanges tend to allow this leverage upside to fall to the bottom line. We anticipate that COIN will choose to re-invest any revenue upside towards marketing, growing its customer base, improving its platform, and building up its infrastructure.Valuation:In their 1st quarter 2021 release, management provided a low-to-mid-to-high range for a number of key metrics. In terms of MTU's, COIN management provided low guidance of 4.0 million and high guidance of 7.0 million. In 2019, the net revenue per MTU was $37 and it increased to $49 last year. Over the last 8 quarters, the net revenue per MTU range has grown from $26 in the 1 st quarter of 2019 up to $59 in the last quarter of 2020.In our modeling and analysis, we will stick with management guidance, which ranges from $35 million to $45 million in net revenue per MTU. This implies revenue for the final three quarters of the year could be in the $3.48 billion on the low side and up to $4.64 billion on the high side. If we simply average these low and high ranges, 2021 revenue would be $4.1 billion. Considering COIN did $1.8 billion in revenue in the 1 st quarter alone, it is probably safe to assume that 2021 revenue will approach $4 billion this year. Our model is fairly detailed, but for this exercise, we will use a nice round $4.0 billion in 2021 revenue. Then, for 2022, we will assume 15% growth, to $4.6 billion. This does not seem like we are being aggressive. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if COIN generates this level of revenue a full year earlier.Without making an assumption on future volume growth, we need to estimate profit margins for COIN. Over the next decade, we would expect COIN to post EBITDA margins into the mid-50's%. Over the next one to two years, we would like COIN to annually increase margins by 200 basis points. This should be do-able, even with COIN making significant investments in their operational technology and platform.Stock Trading vs Fundamentals:It can be challenging to sometimes separate the volatility of a stock from its underlying fundamentals. For example, the primary exchange to trade interest rates is the CME. When it comes to trading Brent crude, most traders prefer ICE (although WTI is primarily traded on CME). While both of these exchanges trade hundreds of other products and assets, those two products (interest rates and Brent crude) tend to materially impact the exchange stock price.When it comes to COIN, we anticipate the stock will trade very closely to the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum. If both digital currencies continue to rise, COIN's stock will be a solid success. If Bitcoin falls by (80%), like it did in 2019, COIN's stock will dramatically fall. In a world with massive Bitcoin volatility, COIN's underlying fundamentals should be good. In theory, COIN's stock should correlate and reflect the volatility of Bitcoin and Ethereum, not just their upward trajectory. However, we fully anticipate COIN's stock to trade in-line with the success or failure of Bitcoin.Today's reality is that certain market participants are not long-term investors. Many unfortunately consider stocks as pieces of paper, as short-term trading instruments. If Bitcoin were to struggle and decline in value, that volatility and environment would be excellent for COIN. In fact, that might be a great time to \"dip one's toe\" into a position. However, the Reddit and Wall Street Bets community is more likely to consider short-term trading momentum than bottoms up, underlying fundamentals.As we discussed earlier, COIN generated an impressive 2020 operating margin of 32%, compared to a (9%) in 2019. While some companies can post steady and smooth operating margins, COIN's will be much lumpier, at least until it is less Bitcoin becomes less volatile. Also, COIN has $188 million of cryptocurrencies on its balance sheet, comprised mainly of $130 million of Bitcoin and $24 million of Ether. There will be opportunities to purchase COIN, when short-term investors sell. This will likely occur as COIN ramps up its expenses or when Bitcoin falls.Price Target:Over the next month or so, we anticipate most sell-side analysts will publish targets on COIN. Unfortunately, most will use revenue multiples to determine their price targets. Manole Capital only owns companies that generate earnings and free cash flow, so we are loathe to utilize revenue multiples for price targets. We find that companies that use revenue multiples to justify a valuation are often incapable of generating important free cash flow. We are fine with companies investing in their future to ensure growth, but we cannot invest in companies that aren't concerned with free cash flow. For us, using the crutch of a revenue multiples isn't something we are comfortable doing.Fortunately, for this analysis of COIN, the company generates plenty of profit and free cash flow. We conservatively model COIN's revenue next year at $4.6 billion. Also, we believe it can add a point or two to EBITDA margins, into the mid-40% range. That would be 2021 EBITDA of $2.1 billion or $11.89 per share. We don't want to sound like a \"wise old sage\", but in the \"olden days\", investors could utilize reasonable EV (enterprise value) to EBITDA multiples in the 10x to 15x range. Maybe, if a company was experiencing fantastic growth and was getting acquired, you might see an EBITDA multiple approach 20x. Nasdaq, ICE and CBOE all have trailing EV to EBITDA multiples in the mid-to-high teens. In order to be remotely close to where COIN will trade this week, we would have to use a MarketAxess (MKTX) or Tradeweb (TW) lofty TTM EV to EBITDA multiples of roughly 45x. We just don't believe EV to EBITDA is the proper valuation metric to currently use. Should we use another cryptocurrency company like Silvergate (SI) and estimate a valuation using their EV to EBITDA multiple? At 108x trailing EBITDA, that would be a waste of time.To arrive at a realistic COIN price target, let's just model earnings and use a premium forward P/E multiple. If we apply a tax rate of 25% (not assuming any tax loss carryovers), we can estimate an EPS in 2021 of $8.50.Using that $8.50 per share in EPS, we then want to apply an exchange-like multiple, adding in a premium for COIN due to its exceptional growth. The average publicly-traded exchange trades at a forward P/E multiple of 20x. The table below provides some different targets, based upon the premium P/E one believes COIN deserves.Forward P/E Multiple 25x 30x 40x 45x 50xPremium to Peers 20% 50% 100%COIN Target $213 $255 $340 $381 $426On Wednesday, initial projections are looking for COIN to trade towards $65 billion, which implies $350 per share. We fully anticipate COIN rocketing past $400 and potentially closing the day in the $500 per share range. This would imply a market capitalization of COIN of $93 billion, which is approaching the $100 billion level that have been rumored to have occurred on some private exchanges.Conclusion:We expect COIN's direct listing on April 14th to be \"hot\".In a typical IPO, companies raise capital and provide exclusive, early access to large institutions. With wire houses placing shares into large institutions and asset managers first, retail investors often get shut out. Retail platforms like Schwab, Ameritrade, Robinhood, Fidelity typically cannot access IPOs for their customers.Since COIN has over $1 billion of cash on its balance sheet and does not need capital, it has decided to do a direct listing. The advantage of a direct listing is that it will enable retail investors to purchase COIN at the same time as larger institutions. Once COIN begins to trade freely on the Nasdaq exchange, both retail and institutional traders can participate. With 186 million shares outstanding, the market will ultimately determine what share price COIN trades at. We expect a flood of market orders, creating an interesting first day of trading.Is the lofty valuation we just laid out fair? Probably not, but that's what the market will determine. Is this a realistic scenario? Are our forecasts too conservative? Should you be an aggressive buyer? We think our estimates are fair, but COIN will likely immediately trade towards an aggressive multiple.If you don't want to pay that kind of forward multiple for COIN, there are other alternative. Maybe you should consider an investment in some of the other (and less expensive) exchanges, like Nasdaq or CBOE? These companies do not have the same growth prospects as COIN, but they do come with a much smaller price tag.We believe that COIN is a safe, trusted and easy-to-use platform for trading digital currencies. Some investors believe that they have \"missed out\" on the meteoric rise of Bitcoin, so they might chase a position in COIN. Others will look at COIN as a long-term opportunity to own the dominant digital currency exchange.In our opinion, owners should be willing to pay a premium for COIN shares, but they should also be prepared for significant volatility and competition. Only you know your specific risk/reward tolerances. Only time will tell the answers to some of these questions, but we'll get a good idea on Wednesday, once COIN trading begins.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Thinking About Buying Coinbase? - Here's Your Note</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nThinking About Buying Coinbase? - Here's Your Note\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-14 23:14 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4419039-thinking-of-buying-coinbase>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nWednesday,Coinbase shares open at $381 on Nasdaq, valuing cryptocurrency exchange at $99.6 billion.SummaryCoinbase is going public today.Instead of reading their +300 page S-1, read our 19 page note....\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4419039-thinking-of-buying-coinbase\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"COIN":"Coinbase Global, Inc."},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4419039-thinking-of-buying-coinbase","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1145468327","content_text":"Wednesday,Coinbase shares open at $381 on Nasdaq, valuing cryptocurrency exchange at $99.6 billion.SummaryCoinbase is going public today.Instead of reading their +300 page S-1, read our 19 page note.We discuss: digital currencies, store of value, medium of exchange.Plus, a deep dive into COIN's model, storage, trading, price target.Manole Capital Management - Bitcoin & Coinbase (COIN) - April 2021What is FINTECH?Manole Capital Management exclusively focuses on the emerging FINTECH sector. For some investors, FINTECH means We define FINTECH as \"anything utilizing technology to improve an established process.\"* Source: This is a Business Insider slide on the FINTECH EcosystemFor us, the quintessential FINTECH business is the payment industry. As you can see in this FINTECH ecosystem Business Insider slide, we bolded thePayments and Remittancesspace, as that is our preferred area to invest. Others can invest in FINTECH's through Alternative Finance companies or digital banks or Insurtechs, but for us, we love the payment sector. We are attracted to the predictable, sustainable and recurring revenues of their businesses, where they essentially earn revenue per swipe economics.When most investors discuss FINTECH, they rarely (if ever) discuss the exchanges. Similar to these payment and transaction-based models, many of the exchanges also earn revenue, free cash flow and profits per transaction or trade. When it comes to trading certain assets (interest rates, equities, commodities, foreign currency, etc), there tends to be high barriers to entry or an impregnable moat around certain franchises. While many of these businesses are not recession proof, they have proven to be recession resistant.Financials:While Financials only represent 11.3% of the S&P 500 (as of March 2021), roughly 3/4rd's of this sector's weight is comprised of traditional financial institutions, like banks and insurance companies. These businesses are typically credit sensitive, with opaque and complex balance sheets. To simplify the banking model, the underlying asset is the US dollar and they simply look to borrow that capital at a low fee and lend it out to borrowers at a higher rate. This spread business can generate excellent returns, but it comes with a risk. Is the bank following a solid and time-tested risk model? Are borrowers credit worthy?If an investor has exposure to the Financial sector, one should have a strong opinion on the 10-year yield. The 10-year stands at 1.7% and has significantly risen over the last several months. The Financial sector has a 5-year rolling correlation with the 10-year Treasury of 67% (per Scotiabank and Bloomberg research). We simply choose to not invest in banks and business models that don't have ourideal characteristics (click here).As we stated above, we are attracted to businesses that generate steady and recurring and free cash flow. Unfortunately, most Financials are not transaction based business models.Our Goal:This note will review digital currencies, Bitcoin and the opportunity in the exchange space. We will use our over two decades of experience following and owning exchanges to draw some parallels for this new asset class. For example, there are \"big picture\" matters concerning storage, access, theft, usage, documentation, identity, rights and dozens of other issues. Blockchain and technology advancements theoretically solve some of these problems, but unfortunately not all.Some digital currency or technology experts might find this analysis rudimentary. Others are new to this asset class and want a primer on the industry. That's our primary goal or target, is to provide an initial 30,000 foot view on digital currencies and then dive into the details of the largest (and soon to be public) exchange.As always, we strive to present our work in a very readable format. If they had the patience to read our research, we attempt to write our notes so our 80-year father or 14-year old son could easily understand. We will try our best to review the requirements to be considered a currency, volatility, pricing, digital wallets, NFT's (non-fungible tokens), stable coins and some other digital currency issues. After that, we will do a fairly deep dive into Coinbase (ticker COIN). You can read their nearly 300-page S-1 filing with theSEC (click here)or you can let us serve as your \"Cliff Notes\" version. We will discuss their business model, how they generate revenue, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as provide a framework for valuation and a price target. We hope you find this latest research from Manole Capital topical and interesting.Digital Currencies:In our 1st quarter 2021 investor newsletter, which we published on Seeking Alpha, we discussed COIN's business and its opportunity. We wrote a couple pages on the subject, but felt it deserved a much larger and dedicated piece of research.Before we dive into Coinbase, we wanted to provide our thoughts on Bitcoin and digital currencies. As we stated in the opening paragraph, Manole Capital believes the payments industry is the dominant FINTECH sector. Over the last 5 years, we have done a significant amount of work on digital currencies, trying to understand their best usage, functionality and role in the future of payments. Are digital currencies a threat to the payment networks, processors and merchant acquirers? In order to answer these questions, one has to understand how a typical payment transaction occurs. Who processes, clears and settles a card transaction?We have written dozens of articles on this subject, which can easily be viewed here. In our opinion, there are two main requirements for something to be considered a viable currency. One is that it must be a \"store of value\" and the second is that it must be a \"medium of exchange\".The Requirements To Be A Currency:In order to be a viable currency, two specific requirements are needed. One is that the currency should be a\"store of value\".This is often defined as any asset that can smoothly maintain its economic value, rather than rapidly depreciating. The other requirement is that the currency should be a\"medium of exchange\" or an instrument used to facilitate the sale, purchase or trade of goods between parties.In terms of speed and efficiency, there is no comparison when comparing the centralized payment system to Bitcoin's decentralized platform. Visa processes 1,700 transactions per second and it claims to have 40x the spare capacity, to handle 65,000 transactions per second. PayPal (PYPL) stated that during the 2020 holiday shopping season, it processed over 1,000 transactions per second. Using Bitcoin and its blockchain for global purchases and payments can process roughly 7 transactions per second.As technology improves, one could argue Bitcoin processing will improve. However, if Bitcoin were to get used for payments, the conversion of crypto holdings into US dollars will dramatically increase overall network transactions. We are big believers in the concept of...\"if it ain't broke, don't fix it!\"There are significant acceptance advantages to the existing payment ecosystem. Visa and Mastercard are accepted in over 200 countries and at over 40 million global merchants. Their payment acceptance brands stand for trust and allows billions of purchase transactions to occur each year. The Visa and Mastercard logos are known around the world, permitting the exchange of goods and services in seconds. While Bitcoin is slowly becoming more recognizable, it simply does not have the same acceptance. We believe the existing payment ecosystem handles the \"medium of exchange\" process well. The overall payment landscape is a well-oiled machine, that involves three to four parties, approving transactions in in roughly 1 to 2 seconds.We have discussed the long-term opportunity for a FINTECH company or two to create a \"Super App Holy Grail\". This would be allowing customers to transact with their mobile phone, in whatever currency they wish, at all global merchants. Getting consumers to get rid of their leather wallets is easier said than done. Even though we consider ourselves to be fairly technologically savvy, we still have a wallet that looks a lot like Seinfeld's George Costanza's.Several companies have recently announced their intentions to help spur Bitcoin acceptance. On March 30th, 2021, PYPL announced the launch of its \"Checkout with Crypto\" option. Participating merchants (initially ½ of PYPL's 29 million) can offer their customers the ability to pay for purchases using Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum or Bitcoin Cash. How will this work? Once a PYPL customer purchases or stores crypto holdings in their PYPL digital wallet, he/she will be permitted to use those funds at checkout. When a transaction occurs, PYPL users will see the option to apply their balance to complete a purchase. When customers choose this payment option, PYPL will exchange their crypto for US dollars through its clearinghouse partner, Paxos. The transaction will occur based upon a spot market rate, with a 50 basis point spread built in. PYPL will then remit payment (in US dollars) to the merchant, to satisfy the exchange of goods or services.While this sounds easy, there are significant hurdles. Certain details are still emerging, but customers using this service must buy their crypto within their PYPL digital wallet. This will satisfy PYPL's adherence to Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines, but it doesn't solve all potential hiccups. The four cryptocurrencies PYPL said customers can use, are likely to cause problems. The SEC and IRS have not deemed these to be currencies, but instead, consider them capital assets. If they were to be used for payment, the underlying client will potentially have capital gain taxes, if their PYPL digital wallet has paper gains. If you are making a $20 purchase at Walgreen's, we don't believe customers are wanting to consider the tax ramifications of using their Bitcoin balance in their digital wallet. That potential $20 purchase could potentially cost you a tax liability of 100%.Even if we ignore the large tax issues, there are additional worries. So, if the cryptocurrency in your digital wallet is going to be used to fund purchases, who is going to pay for it? Merchants will have to pay for the cost of converting cryptocurrencies into US dollars, whatever that cost might be. There will be the traditional merchant discount rates applied, but this will ultimately be another cost for merchants to bear. Besides a company like Tesla, that has a dynamic CEO, do you envision merchant's dying to accept additional costs to help their customers transact? Especially when cards are so ubiquitous?So,Teslahas decided it will accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. What does this really mean? If a consumer has a sizeable gain in Bitcoin and wishes to use it to purchase a \"free\" Tesla, there are serious tax consequences. Just like selling an appreciated stock, where a consumer has to pay capital gains taxes, Bitcoin would be under the same burden. Until the IRS classifies Bitcoin as a currency, and not property, this tax problem will remain.The second problem comes if the Tesla buyer decides to return his/her new vehicle. Tesla reserves the right to pay the consumer back in cash, worth the original purchase price, not in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin jumps in value since the original transaction date, the consumer would be negatively impacted. If Bitcoin falls in price, Tesla could return a depreciated Bitcoin to the car buyer. Are there hundreds of thousands of consumers yearning to purchase a Tesla with Bitcoin? We doubt there's too many, especially if they are aware of the tax issues.Last week, Visa announced it would use various FINTECH API's (application programming interface) offered by cryptocurrency custodian and privately-held Anchorage. Visa plans to settle transactions using US dollar stablecoin, powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Once again, this is exciting news, but will likely encounter problems and take a while to come to fruition.Before one uses Bitcoin to transact at the POS (point of sale), be actually believe it can become an excellent opportunity for money transfer. Western Union is about to turn 170 years old and can be considered the original FINTECH company. However, moving paper currency around the world is not terribly technologically advanced. Visa has launched an expanded version of itsDirectplatform, which will allow for cross border disbursements. Visa's platform supports real-time domestic and cross-border person-to-person, business-to-small business and business-to-consumer use cases, so the options are endless. Bill Sheley is the global head of Visa Direct, and he stated, \"Visa is innovating to give financial institutions, governments, individuals and businesses new ways to pay and get paid beyond the card.\"On the \"store of value\" front, the total addressable market for assets is enormous. For example, art and collectibles are a $20 trillion market, gold is $10 trillion, real estate is $200 trillion, bonds are $100 trillion and equities are another $30 trillion.50% of gold is used in jewelry and another 1/3 is used in electronics. While gold used to back fiat currencies, Britain dropped the gold standard in 1931. The US followed suit in 1933 and totally abandoned the gold standard in 1973. There are additional issues to consider like fixed or variable supply, as well as volatility concerns.We agree that digital currencies are becoming a feasible \"store of value\". In our opinion, digital currencies have significant challenges to becoming a \"medium of exchange\". With that caveat, the opportunity for the crypto-economy and digital currencies to thrive is still open ended and vast.Inflation:The world is always looking for additional asset classes and stores of value, especially as governments keep the currency printing presses running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.Last year, the Federal Reserve printed an unprecedented amount of dollars, roughly 1/5 th of all US dollars ever printed. On a daily basis, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces over $500 million over 38 million notes.If you are the United States and the dollar is considered the dominant global currency, your perception of Bitcoin (or any digital assets) should be of concern. The ability of countries to simply print money should inherently be inflationary, yet Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell continues to seek to get the US at and above 2% annually.A couple of weeks ago, the Biden administration announced an infrastructure bill, called the American Jobs Plan, with a $2 trillion spending target. In March of 2021, US government passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. This followed a December of 2020 stimulus package of $900 billion, as well as a CARES Act in March 2020 bill of $2.2 trillion. We are not making a statement about the merits of any of these packages and stimulus programs. We simply are trying to point out the massive amount of money that is getting printed.Many cryptocurrency bulls will cite inflationary worries with fiat currencies for why their digital cryptocurrencies assets are undervalued. We understand this argument, but always come back to an initial framework. If you are the US or the European Union or Chinese government, would you be able to control your society if there wasn't a viable currency in place? Would economies function without government control of its fiat currency? If cryptocurrencies become widely accepted and are considered a better version of payment, would governments be able to function? If the US couldn't issue additional debt to fund its spending initiatives, would it even exist? We just don't believe government regulators will allow certain cryptocurrencies to thrive, especially if it threatens their sovereign currencies.We tend to look at this as a simple supply and demand equation. While Bitcoin has currently issued 18.7 million tokens, there is only a maximum of 21 million that can be created. That fixed supply is counter to some governments. For example, there are countries that have taken the printing of fiat currency too far. Zimbabwe is but one example of runaway inflation. Here's a picture of one of their 100 trillion bills. Yes, that's a 100 trillion. Do you want to be a trillionaire? Simply buy one on eBay for $8.99,by clicking here.Source: This is a picture of Zimbabere's currency, that I took on myiPhoneAs this Piper Sandler chart shows, Bitcoin now has a market capitalization of roughly $1 trillion. If we look at the top 10 digital assets by market capitalization, the vast majority of market share falls to just 2 currencies.* Source: This is a Piper Sandler slide/chartIt is estimated that Bitcoin is over 55% of all cryptocurrency market capitalization and Ethereum is roughly 11%. Cryptocurrencies like Tether, Binance Coin, Stellar, Cardano, Litecoin have a modest following and just 1% to 2% market share (all under $50 million in market cap).Digital currencies should be considered assets, as they can be represented digitally, dynamically transmitted, and stored safely in the cloud. However, digital assets and cryptocurrencies have a long way to go to become used in our globally interconnected economies.Rules & Regulations:In a perfect world, we think all assets should trade 365 days a year and 24 hours a day. In this hypothetical environment, assets should immediately process and settle and fees to transact should be modest. Why does the NYSE only officially operate from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm EST Monday through Friday (and not on holidays)? There are trades that occur pre-market and post-market hours, but liquidity and volumes are sparse. The simple answer is that this is the way it has always occurred and why should we change something that isn't broken.The traditional exchanges have always had a set period of time where they are \"open for business\", but this is changing. For example, the technology backbone of the CME Group (ticker CME) is called Globex. It essentially permits 24/7 trading to occur on its electronic platform for equities, interest rates, commodities, foreign exchange and other assets. After years of investing in international growth, roughly 1/5 th of all volumes come from outside of the US.In order to have access to Globex, there are rules one needs to adhere to, as exchanges are heavily regulated entities. Just like banks need to conduct AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer) due diligence on its customer base, the exchanges need to follow strict guidelines enforced by their regulators.As of today, we believe there are over 50 distinct blockchain protocols which support more than 7,500 various digital assets. Unfortunately, the financial systems are not known as entities that are quick to adopt change and technology. The world has embraced the internet, as a revolutionary and transformational platform. However, financial systems are not comfortable seamlessly exchanging data, information and assets. There are numerous activities like cross border payments or peer-to-peer payments that are ideally suited for technological advancements, but rules and regulations exist to stymie growth.The goal of an open and transparent financial system is honorable, but not terribly realistic. In terms of managing one's assets, especially money, the process can be cumbersome.Volatility:If we accept cryptocurrency as a digital asset, we then want to better understand how value is determined, where it can be stored and how best to process and handle its exchange. With decentralized assets, the network allows participants to transact without intermediaries. Who sets the value and determines price?The most notable cryptocurrency is Bitcoin and it has a CAGR of over 150%, from 2013 to 2020. In 2017, it rose 1,318%, but then fell by (72.6%) in 2018. In 2020, it rose over 302% and it currently is up well over 50% this year. Since January of 2017, there have been 5 corrections of 50% of more in Bitcoin, so it can be wildly volatile.We are slowly getting comfortable with digital assets and cryptocurrencies as a \"store of value\" and believe they will become a viable asset in one's diversified portfolio. Each individual or entity needs to determine their own risk and reward framework, so cryptocurrency might be 10 basis points or 10% of one's portfolio.Opinions on Bitcoin are changing every day. Back in 2018, the CEO of Blackrock (Larry Fink) called Bitcoin a currency \"for money launderers.\" A year earlier, JP Morgan CEO, Jaime Dimon called Bitcoin a \"fraud\" and threated to fire any bank employee who dealt with the currency. Fast forward to today: Blackrock (in January 2021) enabled two of its mutual funds to purchase Bitcoin, and a JP Morgan analyst recently published that he thinks Bitcoin could rise to $146,000.Recently, large institutional interest has boosted the price of certain digital assets. High profile investors like John Tudor Jones (May 2020) and Stanley Druckenmiller have made sizeable purchases of various digital currencies. Other companies like Microstrategy (August 2020) and Tesla (Feb 2021) have made sizeable transactions for their firm's balance sheet.Stable Coins:A stable coin is simply a digital asset that is attempts to lower volatility by pegging itself to an actual fiat currency or physical asset (ex: gold). For example, Tether has a market capitalization of over $40 billion, is backed by US dollars and it's the largest cryptocurrency stable coin. One of the risks associated with stable coins is ensuring that the proper amount of fiat currency is held in reserve to match the amount of stable coins in circulation.In prior official commentary, the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia - Elvira Nabiullina - stated that Russa was against any form of private currency, as it threatened financial sovereignty. Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs also was considering seizing all digital currencies and claiming cryptocurrencies criminal activity. Now, in January 2021, the Bank of Russia began to test a ruble-based stable coin. While starting cautiously, the Russian Central Bank is exploring the possibility of issuing its own digital currency. There are numerous countries that are investigating the process of issuing CBDC's or Central Bank Digital Currencies. China has studied the process of issuing a digital yuan, the European Central Bank is looking into a digital Euro.Other governments and regulators have highlighted the risks of digital currencies. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority called crypto assets \"high risk, speculative investments\" where investors \"should be prepared to lose all their money.\" US Treasury Secretary (and former Federal Reserve Chairwoman) Janet Yellen has warned on investing in digital currencies too. Just a week ago, India's Reserve Bank took a fairly bearish tone on digital currencies. Rumors are that India is looking to pass a law outlawing cryptocurrencies and making anyone trading or holding them punishable with sizeable fines. India's Finance minister is Nirmala Sitharaman and she said India's Cabinet will shortly issue a final ruling on the matter and that the governments ruling is \"under preparation and nearing completion\".Will additional countries look to make cryptocurrencies illegal? These type of comments act as a governor to adoption and change. Politicians and governments are worried about losing control of their economies. Statements like this are further evidence that governments will remain a headwind. We aren't going to put this in the realm of a new \"space race\", but the country that embraces this technology first might have an early advantage versus those that are afraid of change.Digital Currency Conclusion:This quick digital currency discussion was created to set the framework for an analysis of Coinbase (ticker COIN). Will digital currencies replace traditional payment systems? We do not believe it will, but continued adoption and traction in digital currencies is noticeable.Is Bitcoin poised to climb higher, or will it crash? We simply don't know. What we do know is that we prefer to own the medium where these \"assets\" trade. We would compare this to the Gold Rush of the mid-1800's. Back in 1849, owning Levi Strauss made a fortune selling picks, pans and shovels to '49ers looking for gold. Back then, some would say, \"There's gold in those mountains.\"Nowadays, there's a huge opportunity in the collection of data and information. We truly have no idea what the price of Bitcoin will do, except we know that it will be very volatile. As we know, volatility leads to trading, which should equate to profits for the exchanges. Speaking of exchanges, let's now discuss another exchange and upcoming FINTECH direct listing - COIN.Introduction to Coinbase (ticker COIN):The stated goal of COIN is \"to create an open financial system for the world.\" While this is altruistic, it seems to be fairly broad based goal. It is noble to strive to create a financial system that is transparent for all mankind. It might be more prudent to strive to provide an end-to-end infrastructure and technology platform for all types of cryptocurrencies.From our perspective, it might be judicious for COIN to focus its attention on providing value adding services for all types of digital currencies. If COIN becomes the dominant exchange where anyone can easily and securely send and receive Bitcoin, it will thrive. If COIN can create an efficient and accessible marketplace for the emerging digital assets community, it can be a massive success. There are hundreds of platforms that want to democratize access to the crypto-economy, but COIN (as the oldest and most recognizable brand) seems to have an early lead in this race.Coinbase:COIN was started in 2012 and it has built a trusted platform for accessing various crypto currencies. Using blockchain technology, COIN has simplified the user experience and reduced the complexity of purchasing, selling and holding digital currencies. In its early days, COIN was primarily just used for sending and receiving cryptocurrencies. Then, it became a trusted platform for those seeking to invest in various currencies. We liken this period as COIN's realization that it needed to become an \"exchange\" or intermediary between buyers and sellers. It has since launched cryptocurrency payments, distribution capabilities, storage, borrowing and lending services.As this chart from COIN shows, there are over 45 different cryptocurrencies investors can purchase and another 90 that can be stored at COIN.* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1However, two primary digital currencies dominate COIN's total trading volumes. In 2020, Bitcoin represented 41% of COIN's trading volumes and 15% came from Ethereum. While this 56% is a decline from 2019 levels (72% of the total mix), we envision both will remain the primary digital currencies traded on COIN.Revenue:Over the last several years, COIN has materially grown its revenue. In 2019, revenue $533 million and it impressively grew to $1.3 billion last year. As we show in our pie chart, in 2020, COIN's $1.28 billion of revenue grew 130% year-over-year and was a mix of 86% Transactional, 3% Subscription & Services and 11% \"Other\".On April 6th, COIN reported 1st quarter 2021 results and the metrics were eye popping. Last quarter, COIN generated $1.8 billion in revenue, which exceeded the prior two years combined.In 2020, 86% of COIN's total revenue wasTransactionalin nature. This means revenue was derived from sending, receiving, investing and spending cryptocurrencies. When it comes to Transactional revenue, we like to look at the fee as a percentage of total volume traded.COIN provided this diagram and it shows exactly what products are inside of each of its revenue classifications. The remaining 15% of total revenue came fromSubscription & Services,which COIN classifies as paying, distributing, storage, and from borrowing and lending cryptocurrencies.* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1Storing earns custodial fee revenue, which we will dissect in a couple of pages. Staking revenue comes from validation on a proof-of-stake blockchain transaction. License revenue is generated from users of its Analytics services. Lastly, COIN can earn campaign revenue or distribution fees when its constructs educational materials for issuers. For cryptocurrency issuers, COIN earns revenue for helping the platform engage with its users, in the form of educational videos or tasks, when cryptocurrencies are attempting to widen their distribution, marketing and acceptance. While these ancillary services are nice, the real opportunity is trading.Customer Type:In its S-1 regulatory filing, COIN showed its product portfolio, separated from retail users, institutions and other ecosystem partners. One has to understand that different clients are paying different rates. Over the last 8 quarters, this revenue rate has averaged 0.61%, with a high of 0.80% in the 1st quarter of 2019 and a low of 0.50% in the 4th quarter of 2020.Looking at the last 8 quarters, we can clearly see that both retail and institutional trading volumes have exploded higher. It is interesting to see that Retail was bigger at $45 billion in the 1 st quarter of 2018 than it was at the end of last year at $32 billion. Also, one can see that Institutional trading volumes have gone from $11 billion in the 1 st quarter of 2018 and now are over $57 billion.* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1COIN has different fees depending on whether or not the client is retail or institutional, as well as whether or not the client uses Coinbase or Coinbase Pro, which we will discuss this later on, in our pricing section.Trading volumes:In terms of exchanges, it all comes down to volumes. Crypto exchange volumes have soared, because of strong interest from both retail and institutional clients. This type of growth will not continue, but volatility tends to drive overall volumes.Looking at this Compass table, one can clearly see that volumes noticeably increased in 2018, following the rise of Bitcoin in December of 2017. What happened in late 2017 that helped drive future trading volumes? Well, CBOE and CME both launched Bitcoin future contracts that month.* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassSo far in 2021, COIN has experienced 298% growth in ADV (average daily volumes). What did Bitcoin increase last year? Just over 300%. There's clearly a very high correlation between Bitcoin's recent price and COIN's future ADV.One of our favorites aspects of investing in the exchanges is the ability to simply model the businesses in Excel. The large, publicly-traded exchanges provide wonderful transparency for investors, by posting daily volumes. We liken this to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley providing real-time insights into their prop desk trading results. You shouldn't hold your breath for that level of transparency, right?Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Bitcoin:In the real estate business, the common phrase is that the 3 most important items are \"location, location and location.\" For digital currency exchanges, we believe the 3 most important products are \"Bitcoin, Bitcoin and more Bitcoin.\"On COIN's platform, the volumes tend to be concentrated in a few different currencies. In 2019, BTC or Bitcoin was 58% of COIN's trading volumes, but that fell to 41% in 2020. ETH or Ethereum was 14% in 2019 and that grew slightly last year to 15% of COIN's total. The biggest category jump came from \"other\", which was 18% in 2019 and grew to 44% last year.Having multiple products to transact in is obviously key, but COIN is cryptocurrency dependent. Yes, tokens like Dogecoin might come in and out of favor, but COIN is dependent upon higher Bitcoin and Ethereum prices.A great aspect to owning CME is their transparency. Not only does CME provide daily ADV, but they provide details on open interest. We like to follow open interest, as it is a leading indicator of future volumes. Also, CME provides details on large open interest holders (called LOIH's) or those owners of a minimum of $7.5 million of Bitcoin futures. Over the last couple of months, CME has hit all-time highs in volumes in Bitcoin futures trading. This year, Bitcoin futures contracts on the CME have averaged 13,800 contracts per day, up 42% year-over-year.Like CME, COIN has invested heavily in its technology to give its customers access to a deep pool of cryptocurrency liquidity. Like we just described, this liquidity can act as a virtuous cycle. Volumes beget more volumes and leading more customers onto the platform.Pricing:We focus on the trading volume of an exchange, but also try to model how revenues are generated from this volume. Each trade does not generate the same level of revenue, as different traders tend to pay different prices.In derivative exchange land, we often look at commission prices as RPC or rate per contract. For example, CME charges $0.478 a contract to trade interest rates, $0.545 to trade equities, $0.764 to trade foreign currency, $1.397 to trade metals, $1.336 to trade agricultural commodities and $1.124 to trade energy. Within each product, prices can vary. For example, WTI crude is a different trading price versus natural gas contracts. While CME is trying to get more retail customers into trading futures and options, the vast majority of its volumes are from institutions.At COIN, there are different fees for different clients. COIN has two main fee structures, one called Coinbase Pro and the other called Coinbase Prime. Here's a quick look at the pricing tiers, as discussed in the S-1 filing, based upon whether or not a client is taking or providing liquidity (called taker fee and maker fee).* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassTransaction revenue, as a percentage of total volumes traded, has averaged 0.61% over the last 8 quarters. Over these 2 years, retail client transactional revenue has increased from 1.27% up to 1.47%. For institutional clients, revenues as a percentage of volumes traded has fallen from 0.07% down to 0.05%. Clearly, retail customers pay significantly more than institutional clients to trade.Also, unlike transacting in a stock, COIN calls its transaction based revenue \"staking\" revenue. This is earned from transaction validation on a proof-of-stake blockchain, when COIN's nodes successfully creates or validates a certain block. This revenue is recognized when the rewards are available for transfer and at the point when the block creator or validation is complete. The metrics that determine the staking revenue are driven by quantity, price and rewards rate.Customers:The strengths of COIN's platform seem to be its vast and extensive network of contacts. COIN is leveraging its trusted brand to attract those that want access to transact or store cryptocurrencies.COIN's growth strategy is based upon driving more customers onto its platform and becoming the de-facto platform for cryptocurrency. Just like the online brokers did in the 1990's, the key to growth was adding new accounts and clients to the platform.In this COIN chart, one can see the exceptional growth in verified users or those that have \"demonstrated an interest\" in COIN's platform. In addition to these users, there are another 7,000 institutional customers, across roughly 100 countries.* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1These verified users have registered for an account and confirmed either their email address or a phone number. In our model, we are not terribly interested in tracking verified users as a key metric. While it is nice to know who interested in cryptocurrencies, it is much more important to understand who is willing to transact.As you can see in this Compass Point chart, COIN has 2.8 million MTU or monthly transacting users. In order to be considered a customer needs to have logged in and transacted one time, over a 28-day rolling period.* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassIt is interesting to see that there were 2.7 million MTU's in the 1 st quarter of 2018 and 2.8 million MTU's at the end of last year. Over those 2 years, MTU's dramatically declined and then lifted. As of today, COIN has roughly 3 million MTUs, which was up +180% year-over-year, but we like to think of it as only 7% of its verified total accounts.This reminds us of the online brokerage business, back in the 1990's and 2000's. For years, the primary goal of marketing executives at the online brokers was to generate more and more accounts. The theory was that with new accounts, clients would eventually look to consolidate their relationships with one or possibly two firms. Once an account was opened, the goal was to increase wallet share from that satisfied customer.For online brokerages, driving customers typically comes from TV advertising. One cannot watch CNBC or Bloomberg or Fox Business without seeing advertisements for Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E*Trade, Fidelity or Interactive Brokers. Robinhood was very successful in opening up investment accounts for the emerging Gen-Z demographic, but its well-publicized issues in late January (regarding prohibiting \"meme stocks\" purchases) might impact its torrid account growth.How does COIN plan on increasing its exposure and customer base? Our guess is that it will look to increase its marketing spend. The ROI or return on investment of TV marketing is somewhat opaque. We anticipate COIN learning from its foray into marketing and advertising, with some successes, as well as some failures.The best avenue to increase accounts and customers is to offer a product that cannot be easily replicated. COIN can continue its account growth by launching new and innovative products, as well as offering access to new cryptocurrencies.While BTC or Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency today, maybe there will be a new and exciting cryptocurrency in vogue tomorrow. Over the last few months, Dogecoin has garnered significant attention and media coverage. While we shake our head and do not understand the fascination with this cryptocurrency, the goal for COIN is to attract and become the go to platform for those that wish to transact. COIN needs to expand its support of all digitally native cryptocurrencies and help to tokenize new assets.Storage:While the vast majority of COIN's revenue is trading based, COIN does earns subscription and service revenue when customers choose to safely store their cryptocurrencies on its platform.COIN is one of the most trusted exchanges in the crypto space and operate as a \"qualified custodian\". This means that they have a separate company, called Coinbase Custody, which operates as a standalone, independently-capitalized business. Under New York State Banking Law, Coinbase Custody is considered a fiduciary. All digital assets are segregated and held in a trust. COIN has never suffered a hack that led to loss of funds and cannot afford to ever have that breached.As you can see in this COIN asset chart shows, there has been excellent growth on the platform. At the end of 2020, COIN had $90.3 billion in assets on its platform, which was up +432% year-over-year.* Source: This is a slide/chart from COIN's S-1Of these assets, 70% was from Bitcoin and another 13% were Ethereum. Clearly, those two currencies represent the bulk of COIN's platform assets.Wallets:The leather wallet in your pocket holds a combination of cash and credit/debit cards. However, cryptocurrencies and tokens need to be kept in a crypto wallet. \"Hot wallets\" are connected to the internet and are considered much less secure, while \"cold wallets\" are kept offline. Most cryptocurrency custodians employ \"cold\" storage to safely hold a client's digital assets.Acting as a cold cryptocurrency custodian (say that 3x fast), COIN derives fee revenue based on a percentage of the daily value of customer accounts. The assets under custody are a function of quantity, price and type of cryptocurrency asset.Custody:In addition to hot versus cold wallets, there are two primary ways to store your Bitcoin. The first is called self-custody. This is when an individual or entity has complete control of their Bitcoin. This entails maintaining and controlling your own private key. When it comes to Bitcoin storage, there is a popular self-custody mantra that says, \"not your keys, not your coins\". This implies that if you do not control the private key for your Bitcoin, it is not truly your Bitcoin.The second way to store your Bitcoin is to outsource it to a trusted custodian, like Kraken, Coinbase, Anchorage or others. In this case, the custodian stores your Bitcoin for you and they have control over its private key. Kraken is security focused and has an time-tested private key management practice. In its 10-years of existence, it has never been hacked.Whether one decides to self-custody or use an outsourced custody provider for storing your Bitcoin, two critical issues must be discussed. The first is trust. Do you trust the custodial firm that holds your Bitcoin? If one self-custodies, they bear the risk of lost private keys, break-ins or natural disasters. On the other hand, self-custody ensures you control your own Bitcoin. The obvious downside of self-custody is that one can lose all of your Bitcoin, if it is not stored properly.Do you trust the bank that holds your checking account or brokerage firm that holds your stocks? US financial institutions are some of the most highly regulated companies in the world and most have proven themselves to be good custodians of our assets. Maybe we can exclude Lehman Brothers and AIG from that statement, but it is fair statement for the other 10,000+ financial institutions in the US.Does trusting a firm called Kraken, with millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin, sound like a sound idea? Some might prefer to custody with a firm like Bank of New York, which announced in March of 2021, that it intends to enter the Bitcoin custody business. However, does Bank of New York have the technological expertise and security protocols of newer entrants like Kraken? With a random name like Manole Capital, we clearly don't place too much emphasis on one's name. We do however appreciate 3 rd party, independent industry rankings. Kraken has been voted the #1 most secure cryptocurrency exchange by ICO Ratings.The second key issue to consider is protection and safety. Cryptocurrency custodians and exchanges are a prime target for hackers. There are hundreds and potentially thousands of thieves looking to steal your Bitcoin private key. PayPal and Robinhood recently sent warnings instructing their clients to install two factor authentication onto their digital wallets / account. Also, governments can force companies to freeze funds, if they perceive illegal activity or fraudulent behavior.Trusting someone else to store and manage your Bitcoin is a challenging decision. There have been a few custody firms to have disastrous results (i.e. Mt. Gox), but there are also extremely competent businesses that can trusted to hold your cryptocurrencies. For us, we prefer an expert store our assets, as opposed to keeping it under the proverbial mattress.Characteristics:As we mentioned earlier, there are certainideal characteristicswe look for in our investments. COIN has a strong brand name and dominates its cryptocurrency niche. Its platform is scalable and by leveraging certain blockchain advancements, COIN can provide a safe and secure environment for its customers.We often look for our companies to have dominant market shares, high barriers to entry and what Warren Buffett calls a \"moat around the franchise\". Regardless of industry, we always focus on an investment's market share. In terms of COIN's cryptocurrency market share, it has risen from 4.5% in 2018 to 8.3% in 2019 up to 11.0% in 2020.For exchanges, there is typically 1 or 2 firms that dominate the trading of a specific asset. These exchanges have the best liquidity and the tightest bid/ask spreads. For example, the CME dominates US interest rate trading, as well as WTI crude trading. Intercontinental Exchange dominates the Brent crude marketplace. Once an exchange begins to control trading for a certain asset, it is very difficult for a competitor to steal market share. Some try to lower trading pricing and commissions, but this usually is only temporary. Investors are always seeking best execution and will usually return to the marketplace with the most liquidity and tightest bid/ask spreads. From an exchange standpoint, this is definition of dominant market share, competitive advantage or possessing a moat around your franchise.Ideally, COIN is looking to become the one-stop shop for those wishing to buy, sell and/or store cryptocurrency. COIN has many of the desirable characteristics we look for in an investment, but it does have risks.Risk #1: BitcoinFor a business like COIN, there are literally dozens of risks. For starters, cryptocurrencies are volatile and we anticipate COIN's stock will be highly correlated to the price of BTC, Bitcoin and other important cryptocurrencies.As we have mentioned, the underlying price of these cryptocurrencies helps to determine COIN's revenue and profits. Possibly the biggest risk for owning COIN stock will be its reliance and dependency on rising Bitcoin and Ethereum prices.Risk #2: CompetitionOn the retail front, COIN has numerous competitors. For example, both Square's Cash App (36 million users) and PayPal (375 million accounts) are offering mobile-based wallets, primarily to retail clients. Customers can purchase various cryptocurrencies on both Square and PayPal and store them for free.Over time, we expect both of these firms to begin to allow wallet holders to transact in whatever currency he/she wishes. For example, a customer can use their Square Cash App wallet to transact at over 3 million Square merchant acquiring locations. This mobile wallet will permit credit or debit transactions, but might also permit the user to utilize their Bitcoin balance. There are numerous issues that still need to be resolved on this front, but this is what we have been calling \"closing-the-loop\".Risk #3: RegulationsExchanges are highly regulated entities and they must learn to engage with their regulators for the benefit of all market participants. COIN is subject to a regulated environment, but the rules and landscape are dynamic. Unlike US financials, with a known regulator, the laws and rules cryptocurrencies are subject to are constantly changing. As COIN moves more of its business to international markets, it will have additional governmental issues to deal with.The new SEC Chairman is Gary Gensler. Gensler was the head of the CFTC from May 2009 to January 2014 and was the primary regulator for the derivative exchanges. In his tenure at the CFTC, Gensler attempted to write rules and regulations for the swap markets, as suggested in the Dodd Frank Act of 2010 (following the Financial Crisis). Now that Gensler is at the SEC, one of his first challenges is what to do about regulating and providing oversight on Bitcoin and other digital currencies. He is not new to digital currencies, as he was a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management after his stint at the CFTC. He primarily taught about blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.As of today, there are only a few crypto funds available to investors. Grayscale has over $38 billion in assets and is the sponsor of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTC:GBTC), which is provides Bitcoin exposure for qualified investors. GBT investors have a $25,000 minimum investment and currently pay a 2.5% management fee.Many firms (Skybridge Capital, Valkyrie Digital, Fidelity Investments, VanEck, WisdomTree, etc) have announced their intention to offer Bitcoin ETF's. attempted to get the SEC to approve Bitcoin ETF's. As of now, the SEC has not approved any of these filings, but it will ultimately have to make a decision on the subject. Earlier SEC rejections were based upon problems with volatility, transparency, market surveillance and market and price manipulation. We expect a positive Bitcoin ETF to be approved by the SEC in 2021.In addition to SEC regulation, we anticipate the Federal Reserve to explore the subject too. Chairman Jay Powell, in official Congressional testimony, has officially stated that the Fed is looking into the idea of a \"fully digital dollar\". This type of \"Fed coin\" would likely need Congressional and White House approval and it is very much in the early innings of its examination. Chairman Powell is still dealing with the ramifications of a global pandemic and a soft US economy, so a CBDC might not be his first or even second priority right now.Risk #4: SecurityAs with any exchange, security and safety is paramount. We anticipate that COIN will be subject to thousands of cybersecurity attacks. Hackers, criminals and even foreign countries might find it worthwhile to breach COIN's platform. COIN's valuation is dependent upon it keeping its first-mover advantage and its reputation as a dominant cryptocurrency custodian. Security, for customers and partners, cannot be underestimated and COIN will have a very large target on its back.Scale & EBITDA Margins:For us, we always like to model in operating or EBITDA margins, as well as free cash flow for our exchanges. In 2020, EBITDA margins for the largest exchanges were impressive. Here is a table of the dominant four exchanges and their EBITDA margins last year, as compared to COIN. Looking at the 2020 EBITDA margins of its publicly-traded exchange peers, provides interesting insights. Last year, CBOE posted 68% EBITDA margins and CME and ICE each posted margins in the 62% to 63% range. Despite trailing their competitors, Nasdaq had impressive EBITDA margins of 55%, that would be the envy of most companies. One key takeaway is that all of the exchanges are generating impressive margins with excellent leverage and scale opportunities.Exchanges: CBOE CME ICE NDAQ vs COIN2020 EBITDA Margins 68% 62% 63% 55% 41%These exchanges have spent billions of dollars building out a scalable platform, that has enormous operating leverage. Each and every transaction that occurs is extremely high incremental margins. Most do not provide guidance on future or forward revenue, but they do have decent insight into expenses. The CME typically will provide forward expense guidance in the 2% to 5% range each year. Expenses don't dramatically increase each and every year, but do modestly rise.How does COIN compare? Well, COIN is still constructing its exchange and heavily investing in its infrastructure. Last year, technology and development expenses were $271.7 million or 21% of COIN's total revenue. In 2019, this expense line item was 35% of revenue.In 2020, COIN's expenses grew 50% year-over-year to $868.5 million. At this early stage of its lifecycle, we are pleasantly surprised to see that COIN is generating positive operating leverage (expense growth less than revenue growth).As you can see in this Compass Point chart, over the last 8 quarters, COIN's Adjusted EBITDA margins have steadily improved. Are they peaking or at an all-time high? No, but the best part about COIN's current margin trajectory is where we see it going.* Source: This is a slide/chart from CompassIn its S-1, Brian Armstrong (COIN's CEO) stated a focus on operating profits, as it tries to manage its expense growth. He said, \"We may earn a profit when revenues are high, and we may lose money when revenues are low.\" He then went on to state that \"our goal is to roughly operate the company at break even, smoothed out over time.\"This has proven to be true, when one considers that COIN generated $533 million in revenue in 2019, but lost $30m of profit that year. Then, in 2020, COIN produced $527 million of EBITDA on $1.2 billion of revenue. Clearly, the exchanges can generate very impressive profit margins, at scale.The real benefit for the exchanges comes when volatility spikes and volumes soar. As this happens, assuming the exchanges properly manages this rising volatility, profitability climbs. As more and more volumes transact on a platform, free cash flow (and margins) is very attractive. Operating margins at its other publicly-traded exchanges have been high for years and do not fluctuate significantly from year-to-year. As revenues surprise to the upside, because volatility spikes, these exchanges typically reward their shareholders with buybacks and special dividends. As much more mature businesses, these exchanges tend to allow this leverage upside to fall to the bottom line. We anticipate that COIN will choose to re-invest any revenue upside towards marketing, growing its customer base, improving its platform, and building up its infrastructure.Valuation:In their 1st quarter 2021 release, management provided a low-to-mid-to-high range for a number of key metrics. In terms of MTU's, COIN management provided low guidance of 4.0 million and high guidance of 7.0 million. In 2019, the net revenue per MTU was $37 and it increased to $49 last year. Over the last 8 quarters, the net revenue per MTU range has grown from $26 in the 1 st quarter of 2019 up to $59 in the last quarter of 2020.In our modeling and analysis, we will stick with management guidance, which ranges from $35 million to $45 million in net revenue per MTU. This implies revenue for the final three quarters of the year could be in the $3.48 billion on the low side and up to $4.64 billion on the high side. If we simply average these low and high ranges, 2021 revenue would be $4.1 billion. Considering COIN did $1.8 billion in revenue in the 1 st quarter alone, it is probably safe to assume that 2021 revenue will approach $4 billion this year. Our model is fairly detailed, but for this exercise, we will use a nice round $4.0 billion in 2021 revenue. Then, for 2022, we will assume 15% growth, to $4.6 billion. This does not seem like we are being aggressive. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised if COIN generates this level of revenue a full year earlier.Without making an assumption on future volume growth, we need to estimate profit margins for COIN. Over the next decade, we would expect COIN to post EBITDA margins into the mid-50's%. Over the next one to two years, we would like COIN to annually increase margins by 200 basis points. This should be do-able, even with COIN making significant investments in their operational technology and platform.Stock Trading vs Fundamentals:It can be challenging to sometimes separate the volatility of a stock from its underlying fundamentals. For example, the primary exchange to trade interest rates is the CME. When it comes to trading Brent crude, most traders prefer ICE (although WTI is primarily traded on CME). While both of these exchanges trade hundreds of other products and assets, those two products (interest rates and Brent crude) tend to materially impact the exchange stock price.When it comes to COIN, we anticipate the stock will trade very closely to the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum. If both digital currencies continue to rise, COIN's stock will be a solid success. If Bitcoin falls by (80%), like it did in 2019, COIN's stock will dramatically fall. In a world with massive Bitcoin volatility, COIN's underlying fundamentals should be good. In theory, COIN's stock should correlate and reflect the volatility of Bitcoin and Ethereum, not just their upward trajectory. However, we fully anticipate COIN's stock to trade in-line with the success or failure of Bitcoin.Today's reality is that certain market participants are not long-term investors. Many unfortunately consider stocks as pieces of paper, as short-term trading instruments. If Bitcoin were to struggle and decline in value, that volatility and environment would be excellent for COIN. In fact, that might be a great time to \"dip one's toe\" into a position. However, the Reddit and Wall Street Bets community is more likely to consider short-term trading momentum than bottoms up, underlying fundamentals.As we discussed earlier, COIN generated an impressive 2020 operating margin of 32%, compared to a (9%) in 2019. While some companies can post steady and smooth operating margins, COIN's will be much lumpier, at least until it is less Bitcoin becomes less volatile. Also, COIN has $188 million of cryptocurrencies on its balance sheet, comprised mainly of $130 million of Bitcoin and $24 million of Ether. There will be opportunities to purchase COIN, when short-term investors sell. This will likely occur as COIN ramps up its expenses or when Bitcoin falls.Price Target:Over the next month or so, we anticipate most sell-side analysts will publish targets on COIN. Unfortunately, most will use revenue multiples to determine their price targets. Manole Capital only owns companies that generate earnings and free cash flow, so we are loathe to utilize revenue multiples for price targets. We find that companies that use revenue multiples to justify a valuation are often incapable of generating important free cash flow. We are fine with companies investing in their future to ensure growth, but we cannot invest in companies that aren't concerned with free cash flow. For us, using the crutch of a revenue multiples isn't something we are comfortable doing.Fortunately, for this analysis of COIN, the company generates plenty of profit and free cash flow. We conservatively model COIN's revenue next year at $4.6 billion. Also, we believe it can add a point or two to EBITDA margins, into the mid-40% range. That would be 2021 EBITDA of $2.1 billion or $11.89 per share. We don't want to sound like a \"wise old sage\", but in the \"olden days\", investors could utilize reasonable EV (enterprise value) to EBITDA multiples in the 10x to 15x range. Maybe, if a company was experiencing fantastic growth and was getting acquired, you might see an EBITDA multiple approach 20x. Nasdaq, ICE and CBOE all have trailing EV to EBITDA multiples in the mid-to-high teens. In order to be remotely close to where COIN will trade this week, we would have to use a MarketAxess (MKTX) or Tradeweb (TW) lofty TTM EV to EBITDA multiples of roughly 45x. We just don't believe EV to EBITDA is the proper valuation metric to currently use. Should we use another cryptocurrency company like Silvergate (SI) and estimate a valuation using their EV to EBITDA multiple? At 108x trailing EBITDA, that would be a waste of time.To arrive at a realistic COIN price target, let's just model earnings and use a premium forward P/E multiple. If we apply a tax rate of 25% (not assuming any tax loss carryovers), we can estimate an EPS in 2021 of $8.50.Using that $8.50 per share in EPS, we then want to apply an exchange-like multiple, adding in a premium for COIN due to its exceptional growth. The average publicly-traded exchange trades at a forward P/E multiple of 20x. The table below provides some different targets, based upon the premium P/E one believes COIN deserves.Forward P/E Multiple 25x 30x 40x 45x 50xPremium to Peers 20% 50% 100%COIN Target $213 $255 $340 $381 $426On Wednesday, initial projections are looking for COIN to trade towards $65 billion, which implies $350 per share. We fully anticipate COIN rocketing past $400 and potentially closing the day in the $500 per share range. This would imply a market capitalization of COIN of $93 billion, which is approaching the $100 billion level that have been rumored to have occurred on some private exchanges.Conclusion:We expect COIN's direct listing on April 14th to be \"hot\".In a typical IPO, companies raise capital and provide exclusive, early access to large institutions. With wire houses placing shares into large institutions and asset managers first, retail investors often get shut out. Retail platforms like Schwab, Ameritrade, Robinhood, Fidelity typically cannot access IPOs for their customers.Since COIN has over $1 billion of cash on its balance sheet and does not need capital, it has decided to do a direct listing. The advantage of a direct listing is that it will enable retail investors to purchase COIN at the same time as larger institutions. Once COIN begins to trade freely on the Nasdaq exchange, both retail and institutional traders can participate. With 186 million shares outstanding, the market will ultimately determine what share price COIN trades at. We expect a flood of market orders, creating an interesting first day of trading.Is the lofty valuation we just laid out fair? Probably not, but that's what the market will determine. Is this a realistic scenario? Are our forecasts too conservative? Should you be an aggressive buyer? We think our estimates are fair, but COIN will likely immediately trade towards an aggressive multiple.If you don't want to pay that kind of forward multiple for COIN, there are other alternative. Maybe you should consider an investment in some of the other (and less expensive) exchanges, like Nasdaq or CBOE? These companies do not have the same growth prospects as COIN, but they do come with a much smaller price tag.We believe that COIN is a safe, trusted and easy-to-use platform for trading digital currencies. Some investors believe that they have \"missed out\" on the meteoric rise of Bitcoin, so they might chase a position in COIN. Others will look at COIN as a long-term opportunity to own the dominant digital currency exchange.In our opinion, owners should be willing to pay a premium for COIN shares, but they should also be prepared for significant volatility and competition. Only you know your specific risk/reward tolerances. Only time will tell the answers to some of these questions, but we'll get a good idea on Wednesday, once COIN trading begins.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":117,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":15,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/347989646"}