Crypto Whales Are Loading Up — Are You?
New research shows the biggest crypto buyers are back. And this time? They could hold for the possibility that Bitcoin will surpass $100,000 in 2024. You don’t want to miss the next massive crypto bull run like we saw in 2020 and 2021. To know exactly what’s going on and what to buy… Get Access To Benzinga’s Best Crypto Research and Investments For Only $1.
The IPO market is disjointed: we've heard SecondMarket CEO Barry Silbert say this before. At an event covered by VentureBeat, he continued this message, and in the process revealed more about the future of SecondMarket, Facebook and the IPO space as a whole. Let's take a look at five key points:
1. Big hole: so far, the private shares markets have benefitted from trading in some big-name stocks. With some of them taking a while to go public, former employees' urges to sell and get some early liquidity helped the private shares market, too. But, these companies are going public now. LNKD) IPO" href="http://www.insideipo.com/tag/linkedin">LinkedIn, ZNGA) IPO" href="http://www.insideipo.com/tag/zynga">Zynga, GRPN) IPO" href="http://www.insideipo.com/tag/groupon">Groupon and Pandora have all done so, and Facebook probably isn't hard behind. VentureBeat reports Silbert as saying, ‘Facebook is the elephant in the room, no doubt about that'. He continues, ‘It represents a significant portion of our revenue, so we will have a big hole to fill.'
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2. Plenty of action: according to VentureBeat, SecondMarket is conducting ‘weekly auctions on Facebook stock to meet the extreme demand for shares'. This isn't terribly surprising, given that LinkedIn traded well below its IPO price on SecondMarket and SharesPost before going public last year.
3. Next step: while some see the Facebook IPO as a test of its $100 bn implied valuation, Silbert doesn't perceive a long-term role for SecondMarket as ‘a stepping stone to an IPO.' This makes sense: Silbert has said many times in the past that the IPO market is broken, which would mean positioning his company as a stepping stone wouldn't make sense.
4. The real next step: the market seems to need a solution, according to Silbert, who says once again, ‘The IPO market is dying'. According to VentureBeat, he continues, ‘You see companies achieving robust valuations on the private market but being treated poorly when they go public.' So, rather than a stepping stone, it appears that SecondMarket wants to become an alternative to an IPO, at least for companies of a certain size – in the past, he's talked about the high threshold for going public successfully.
5. Content to wait: given the rocky path to an IPO, many companies are waiting longer to go public. It used to take venture capital-backed companies around five years to go public, and now it's up to 10. Of course, this benefits SecondMarket, as more time as a private company puts pressure on shareholders (including former employees, the biggest group of sellers on SecondMarket) to achieve liquidity events since they often take equity in lieu of cash for part of their compensation.
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Source: VentureBeat
Photo: Fortune Live Media
Crypto Whales Are Loading Up — Are You?
New research shows the biggest crypto buyers are back. And this time? They could hold for the possibility that Bitcoin will surpass $100,000 in 2024. You don’t want to miss the next massive crypto bull run like we saw in 2020 and 2021. To know exactly what’s going on and what to buy… Get Access To Benzinga’s Best Crypto Research and Investments For Only $1.