Gemini vs Coinbase: Which Public Debut Stacked Up?

Over the last decade and a half, crypto has come a long way. It’s no longer a fringe asset, as it has gained mainstream adoption and institutional involvement.

As a result, this time it’s not just tokens rallying wildly on retail support, but cryptocurrency companies themselves are enjoying success in the stock market, signaling the industry’s maturation.

As we have been seeing, a growing number of companies are now holding crypto on their balance sheets and not just Bitcoin (BTC -0.93%) but also Ethereum (ETH -0.53%) and Solana (SOL -1.29%). This strong institutional adoption is contributing to the valuation of cryptocurrencies as legitimate assets, thereby boosting the performance of related stocks.

While several crypto-related companies have captured traditional financial (TradFi) institutions and investors’ interest, crypto exchanges stand out for their central positioning in the digital asset space.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are online platforms where users can buy, sell, and trade digital assets with ease.

Besides simplifying the process of purchasing and selling crypto, they also offer additional services like leverage and margin trading, user-friendly interfaces, staking, and customer support.

Now, there are two main types of exchanges. One is Centralized Exchanges (CEXs), which are managed by a single entity and typically support fiat currencies such as USD and EUR. Then there are Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs), which facilitate peer-to-peer transactions directly on the blockchain.

Our focus today is on CEXs, two in particular, Coinbase (COIN -0.56%) and Gemini, both of which are publicly traded. Coinbase listed via a direct listing on April 14, 2021, while Gemini completed a traditional IPO on September 12, 2025 (GEMI -11.94%).

An initial public offering (IPO) is a process where a private company sells its stock to the general public for the first time and becomes a publicly traded company. By selling shares on a stock exchange to a broad range of investors, the IPO enables a company to raise capital, gain visibility, and provide liquidity for early investors and founders.

Coinbase had its direct listing in 2021, setting a high standard in terms of valuation and market impact, while Gemini made its debut just last week at a more modest valuation but with significant traction. 

Driven by a crypto-friendly administration, strong institutional inflows, and rising corporate adoption, the market is expected to see even more crypto-related IPOs and direct listings in the coming months. 

As this trend of crypto exchanges entering public markets continues on, reshaping the digital asset trading landscape, we will now analyze how Coinbase and Gemini listings, which are a cycle apart, compare against each other and how the crypto sector has matured!

Gemini Makes a Promising Debut

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini went public on Friday, September 12, 2025, amid heavy interest.

Gemini Space Station had its IPO with its shares listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker ‘GEMI’ with Citigroup (C.N) and Goldman Sachs (GS.N) as the lead bookrunners.

The IPO was priced at $28 per share but opened 32% higher, indicating strong market appetite for crypto companies.

At one point, the share price jumped as high as $45.90 before going as low as $31.55 (GEMI -11.94%).

This comes after Gemini raised the proposed price of the 16.67 million shares it was initially planning to sell. From the range of $17 to $19, the price was increased to between $24 and $26 each on the back of strong investor demand. 

Still, the company drew more than 20 times as many orders as there were available shares, reported Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter. In an unusual move, Gemini then stopped taking new orders for shares, capping the IPO proceeds at $425 million.

Based on Gemini’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company would have raised $433 million in its first-ever share sale, without the cap. This excludes the $50 million commitment from Gemini’s strategic investor, Nasdaq, which was to be done in a private placement and be closed right after the IPO.

In the end, the company raised $425 million through the sale of about 15.2 million shares of Class A common stock, resulting in a valuation of $4.4 billion.

The IPO proceeds, Gemini said, will be used to repay its third-party debt and for general corporate purposes.

Massive Demand Despite Financial Setbacks

The exchange was founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss in 2014. The same brothers who were involved in the origins of the social media platform Facebook. The Winklevoss twins are among the earliest Bitcoin holders and believe the BTC price will reach $1 million within the next decade.

They were actually the first to apply to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF, more than ten years before the first one was approved in January 2024.

Today, Gemini ranks among major U.S. exchanges, with meaningful spot and derivatives activity and a 9/10 trust score on CoinGecko.

The regulated platform offers services like buying, selling, storing, and staking cryptocurrencies to both retail and institutional clients. It also offers credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program.

Moreover, Gemini has its own fiat-backed stablecoin GUSD, which is fully regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). The fully programmable ERC-20 token is a digital representation of cash that is supported across exchanges, applications, and DeFi protocols.

As per the SEC filing, Gemini has 1.5 million transacting users, and as of July-end, the exchange holds over $21 billion in assets.

When it comes to company financials, Gemini reported a net loss of $159 million in 2024, as per the company’s filings with the SEC. The figures are worse this year, with the exchange losing $283 million in just the first half of 2025 compared to $41.4 million in the same period last year.

Gemini’s revenue, meanwhile, declined from $74.32 million in the first six months of 2024 to $68.61 million in the same period this year. 

As for the trading volume, it jumped from $16.6 billion in the first half of 2024 to $24.8 billion in the first half of 2025. In total, the exchange has processed more than $285 billion in trading volume throughout its lifespan. 

Despite the disappointing numbers, the Gemini offering was heavily oversubscribed, reflecting massive demand among TradFi investors for crypto options.

Coinbase Marks a Landmark Event

Founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, Coinbase is the largest crypto exchange in the US that boasts having more than 100 million users. 

Almost a decade after its launch, Coinbase debuted on the Nasdaq in April 2021 and joined the S&P 500 Index in May this year. The listing made CEO Armstrong a multi-billionaire with his 39.6 million shares worth almost $13 billion on the first day at the closing price.

The debut came with a reference price of $250 per share. The exchange stock opened at $381 and surged as high as $429.54, which gave it a market capitalization of about $85 billion.

Coinbase’s Nasdaq debut actually marked the top of the 2021 bull market. While Bitcoin price did hit a new high at $69K in November of that year, it wasn’t that far from the April high of $65K.

So, excitement surrounding Coinbase’s public debut soon gave way to a strong crypto market-wide sell-off. The drawdown led COIN shares to fall under $210 within a month of its stock market launch, and by the end of 2022, it hit a low of $31. Then, much like Bitcoin and the broader crypto market, COIN share prices recovered in the following years, hitting a new all-time high (ATH) above $444 in July this year.

COIN share prices fell under $300 in early August but are now back to making a move upwards as BTC trades around $115,000, and the total crypto market cap sits above the $4 trillion mark.

The $85 Billion Debut

It was on April 14, 2021, that Coinbase officially became a public company through a direct stock listing.

Before the exchange listing, Nasdaq set the reference price of $250 per share, which gave Coinbase an estimated value of $47 billion. But because it was a direct listing, no shares actually changed hands at that price.

Unlike in a traditional IPO, where new shares are issued and sold at the reference or offering price and investors buy them at that price, in a direct listing, the company doesn’t issue new shares or raise new capital. The existing shareholders, like founders, employees, and early investors, sell their shares directly to the public, so it all depends on demand and supply.

The reference price is just an estimate used for accounting and reporting purposes. Trading started at market-driven prices, which were higher than $250 due to strong demand amid the ongoing bull mania.

With the direct listing, Coinbase actually followed in the footsteps of other tech companies like Palantir, Slack, Spotify, and Roblox.

So, COIN shares opened at $381 and quickly shot past $400. At one point, the COIN share price was trading at nearly $430. That was before Coinbase closed below its opening price, at just above $328 per share on its first day of public trading.

This gave the exchange an initial market cap of $85.8 billion on a fully diluted basis, and excluding options and restricted stock units, the market cap was $62 billion.

In the six months of Coinbase’s listing, the likes of Palantir, Roblox, Airbnb, DoorDash, and Snowflake also went public with their market caps ranging from $45 billion to $106 billion. Compared to those companies and others that were in the IPO pipeline at the time, Coinbase stood out for its remarkable growth, thanks to digital assets hitting new highs and the exchange being profitable and recording rapidly rising sales and a growing number of customers.

Strong Financials 

Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency company to go public so far. It ranks among the top ten worldwide by trading volume. In the US, it is in the lead, helping bring crypto into the mainstream with its easy-to-use app.

In 2021, Coinbase reported strong financial figures. In the first three months of that year, Coinbase netted about $800 million in profit while revenue was estimated to be $1.8 billion.

This was an increase of 844% from $190.6 million in revenue it generated in the first quarter of the year prior to that. Coinbase actually only made $1.3 billion in revenue in the entire 2020. Net income, meanwhile, was $322 million, after recording a loss in 2019.

The massive jump in revenue came as a result of a considerable spike in crypto prices.

Now, for its most recent quarter ended June 30, 2025, Coinbase reported net income of $1.43 billion, or $5.14 per share. On an adjusted basis, the earnings were $1.96 per share. Earnings in the latest period benefited from a gain of $1.5 billion. 

Coinbase’s revenue, meanwhile, came in at $1.5 billion, with that tied to transactions being $764 million.

The exchange’s subscriptions and services offerings, which include stablecoins, staking, interest income, and custody, grew 9% YoY to $655.8 million.

Retail and institutional trading make up Coinbase’s core business, but the exchange is working on expansion to offer derivatives, prediction markets, tokenized real-world assets, and early-stage token sales within its app.

Strong Standing

Coinbase first began its journey back in June 2012. Co-founder and CEO Armstrong, a former Airbnb engineer, came up with the idea for Coinbase. 

It is actually named after Coinbase transactions, which are special transactions within a new block, created by the miner who successfully solves the block. The transaction introduces new cryptocurrency into circulation in a Proof of Work (PoW) network. 

Now, the crypto exchange Coinbase was funded with a $150,000 cash infusion from the Y Combinator startup incubator program. In the year after its launch, the exchange received investments from VC firm Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Ribbit Capital.

In its last private financing round prior to the listing, which was during the bear market of 2018, Coinbase had a valuation of just $8 billion, which during its debut jumped 10x.

The valuation trails behind the exchange’s impressive growth. Within two years of its launch, Coinbase grew to one million users, and by the end of 2020, it had surpassed 40 million users. At the time of its listing, the number was bigger than 55 million users. And today, Coinbase has more than 100 million verified users.

Backed by these numbers, Coinbase went public in what was hailed as a “watershed” moment for the cryptocurrency industry, becoming the first crypto-native company to list. The move also helped legitimize the sector, which at the time had yet to see a Spot Bitcoin or Ethereum ETF approved.

With limited options for gaining regulated exposure to crypto, Coinbase’s direct stock market listing enabled traditional players to gain a foothold in the crypto space through an entity directly and intricately involved in the space.

The public market debut also showed the world just how big the industry has become and how much it’s growing.

Coinbase vs. Gemini: Key IPO/Listing Metrics at a Glance

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Who’s Next? Kraken, Grayscale, BitGo, and More

Coinbase’s listing on the major stock market index four years ago was regarded as a historic moment. Experts saw it as the first phase in crypto’s evolution into a legit, investable asset class.

The maturation is expected to not only bring new investment flows but also the development of new services and infrastructure. 

It was actually believed to be the catalyst for even more listings going forward. And as we are seeing this year, several crypto companies have gone public. This includes Bitcoin rewards platform Fold (FLD +0.32%), crypto financial services firm Galaxy Digital (GLXY -10.47%), social trading platform eToro (ETOR -3.44%), USDC stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL -5.79%), blockchain-based lender Figure (FIGR -2.12%), and Peter Thiel-backed institutional trading platform Bullish Global (BLSH -3.97%).

Now, looking ahead, several other crypto companies are preparing for public listings.

Crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments is among those that have submitted a registration statement for an IPO to the SEC. This comes after the Digital Currency Group subsidiary finally converted its flagship Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot Bitcoin ETF after winning a court battle against the securities regulator. Similarly, its Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETHE has been converted into a spot Ethereum ETF.

Digital asset custodian BitGo is yet another company that has joined the IPO rush among crypto companies.

When it comes to an exchange, Kraken is in the lead, which is expected to file for an IPO next year, pending regulatory clarity. Earlier this year, the prominent US cryptocurrency exchange began preparing to raise $500 million at a $15 billion valuation in anticipation of a potential IPO.

Kraken’s co-CEO, Arjun Sethi, has stated that the company will only move forward with a public listing if it aligns with the interests of all its stakeholders. 

Financially, the exchange reported a 19% YoY in revenue to $472 million for the first quarter of 2025. For the entire last year, Kraken’s total revenue was over $1.5 billion. In 2Q25, it posted $412M in revenue, $186.6 billion in total exchange volume, and 4 million in funded accounts.

Besides Kraken, Grayscale, and BitGo, Ledger, Uphold, OKX, and Anchorage are also looking to tap into public markets. All these upcoming IPO candidates reflect the growing institutional interest in the cryptocurrency sector and the increasing integration of digital assets into traditional financial markets.

Final Thoughts

Coinbase’s direct listing was a landmark event with a valuation of $85.8 billion, dwarfing Gemini’s $4.4 billion debut. The massive valuation was the result of Coinbase’s sustained profitability and wide user base, which vastly exceeds Gemini’s transacting users and declining revenues.

However, despite being smaller, Gemini has still managed to attract significant demand, which shows promise not only in its services but also in investor interest in crypto offerings. So, while Coinbase’s listing was a pivotal moment that helped legitimize crypto in traditional markets and bring institutional investors on board, Gemini’s IPO adds to the momentum that began last cycle. 

Overall, TradFi’s interest in crypto is rapidly expanding with each new listing, as investors seek exposure to the asset class, reflecting its evolution into a mainstream asset class, gaining widespread adoption, and creating new opportunities for technological advancement and growth.