Coinbase makes cryptocurrency a little more mainstream

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Coinbase, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, is going public:

• Coinbase is the splashiest market entrance since Facebook's IPO in 2012. About 100 million people own some form of cryptocurrency, and Coinbase will be the first major crypto exchange to be publicly traded.
• Twitter is experimenting with a new "Shopping Card" feature that will allow people to shop for products directly from tweets. With platforms steadily rolling out new avenues for monetization, those without unique, high-quality content will fall behind.
• Forced quarantine in Belfast helped this founder triple his revenue, but as culture shock and pandemic anxiety set in, he found that productivity without inspiration wasn't sustainable.

Want to share your ideas with nearly 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

💰 Coinbase Will Be the First Major Crypto Exchange to Go Public

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Coinbase, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, is going public. Coinbase's impact on crypto, and its stunning $100B valuation (the largest market entrance since Facebook's IPO in 2012), made it one of the most highly-anticipated offerings of 2021.

Coinbase 101

What is Coinbase? Coinbase users can buy, trade, sell, and store 50 cryptos via mobile and web apps. The exchange has 43M verified users, up from 35M in July 2020, and more than 7K institutional traders in 100+ countries. The company was founded by a former Airbnb engineer and a former Goldman Sachs trader.

Competition: Crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, and Gemini aren't federally insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), but Coinbase insures losses from theft or hacks.

The background: Coinbase's direct listing is arriving amid a surge of popularity in Bitcoin and other cryptos. Bitcoin is up about 65% since January 1, and has drawn millions of new crypto traders. The total market cap of crypto assets has soared from $500M in 2012 to $782B in 2021.

It's estimated that about 100M people globally own crypto, including roughly 33M Americans.

The process: Instead of an IPO, Coinbase will directly list its shares on the Nasdaq. With an IPO, a company raises capital by creating new shares, underwriting them, and selling them to the public. In a direct listing (also known as a direct public offering), a company raises capital by selling only existing, outstanding shares to the public with no underwriters involved.

The numbers: 2020 was great for Coinbase. The San Francisco-based company posted a $322M profit in 2020, and has been profitable since 2016, according to its SEC filing. Coinbase also boosted revenues by roughly 184%, from $483M in 2019 to $1.14B in 2020. Since its founding in 2012, Coinbase customers have traded over $456B and stored over $90B worth of assets on the platform.

Analyst reactions: A team of D.A. Davidson market analysts praised Coinbase's direct listing:

[It represents the] Amazon moment for crypto.

The firm believes that Coinbase's public offering will lay the foundation for the future of the global financial system.

Market concerns: Another top analyst recommends caution, noting that Coinbase's valuation seems steep. Analysts from the Motley Fool were also hesitant about jumping on the direct offering.

Massive milestone for crypto: Regardless of your view on Coinbase's prospects, its direct public offering is a historic moment for cryptos. Coinbase will be the first major crypto exchange to be publicly traded, which will likely fuel the creation of new crypto traders. It'll also offer traditional investors an avenue to crypto without buying the actual assets, further normalizing crypto around the world.

Do you own any crypto? What do you think of Coinbase going public?

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

📞 Twitter Spaces has beat Clubhouse to Android. Android users can now talk and join in Spaces, but can't yet start their own.

🤐 ByteDance is creating a Clubhouse-like app for China. Clubhouse was blocked in China in early February for hosting conversations on censored topics.

🏝 Companies around the world are beginning to embrace the four-day workweek after two-thirds of companies that implemented the policy saw increased productivity and client satisfaction.

🎭 China is using "emotion recognition technology" to ramp up its surveillance efforts, tracking traits such as facial muscle movements, vocal tone, and body movements to deduce a person's feelings.

🏦 Square is launching as a bank, offering business loans and deposit products; it will also be the primary provider of financial services to Square sellers nationwide.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🛣 Twitter Adds to Creator Monetization Roadmap

from the Indie Airwaves newsletter by Nicky Milner

Twitter is reportedly experimenting with a new "Shopping Card" feature that will allow people to shop products directly from tweets. This addition could be a game-changer for founders with engaged Twitter audiences.

Embracing the creator economy

Background: The creator economy encompasses a broad spectrum of media, including newsletters, podcasts, video, music, art, and more. Some of the media's biggest companies have made acquisitions in the space (Spotify), or announced new features and capabilities (Twitter).

Content creators can monetize on a variety of platforms like Patreon, Substack and OnlyFans, and Hollywood has recently gotten in on the creator economy action; SAG/ACTRA (the "Hollywood union") announced an "influencer agreement" that allows video and audio creators to join the union for representation.

Twitter, in particular, has been swiftly rolling out features in response to the growing creator economy. Although it had a "slow start," according to CEO Jack Dorsey, it has caught on quickly. A Twitter senior executive had this to say on creator avenues for monetization:

You can expect audience-based monetization to be an area that we'll continue to develop new ways to support, whether it's helping broaden revenue streams or serving as a cornerstone of someone's business.

Buying an existing series

Indie impact: Beyond the high-profile announcements, there are plenty of compelling success stories from indie hacker "celebrities" who compound their influence by building in public. Founders have new opportunities to craft their "dream jobs" through a variety of tools, including newsletters, podcasts, and online course. This founder recently suggested that content curation is actually underrated:

Pick a really specific niche that you enjoy, build an RSS feed so that you're continuously fed with trusted sources of information, and then curate content based on that niche and your expert definition of knowledge value.

Buying newsletters? Other approaches include the acquisition of an established newsletter or podcast that has been abandoned. The benefit is having an existing user list that you can build further. AbandonedAssets is a Substack subscription that offers a pay-walled dataset of newsletters that appear to be dormant.

Bottom line: If your content is valuable (i.e. rare, unique, relevant, or in-depth), the timeline-to-monetization can be dramatically reduced. This is broken down in the 100 true fans theory:

Creators need to amass only 100 True Fans, not 1K, paying them $1K a year, not $100. Today, creators can effectively make more money off fewer fans.

What new creator-focused features are you most excited about? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Airwaves for more.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Links Posted to Indie Hackers This Week

🙅‍♂️ We said NO to a $30 million offer from an investor (and here is why). Posted by Ilya Azovtsev.

🤹‍♂️ I was wrong: audience != customers. Posted by Farez Rahman.

📖 Stop thinking about what others would like to read. Posted by Rosie Sherry.

🏋️‍♂️ How hard should you work? Posted by Channing Allen.

👯‍♀️ Rosie Sherry on building communities. Posted by Randall Kanna.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best Around the Web? Submit a link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across an article you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

🚷 Quarantine Stranded This Founder in Belfast and His Revenue Tripled

from the Milestone Road newsletter by James Fleischmann

Kyle Gawley tripled his revenue during a forced extended quarantine in Belfast. He launched Gravity in 2017, but it was COVID-19 that jumpstarted its growth.

Kyle is a solo founder who had been traveling around Southeast Asia since launching in 2017. He was interested in cultural immersion and new experiences, and enjoyed being on the move.

I flew back to the UK for Christmas a little over a year ago, unaware of what was about to unfold. My flight back to Thailand was scheduled for March. Unfortunately, everything collapsed in the final hour and I spent all of 2020 in Belfast.

Stuck in Belfast, Kyle found that work kept him sane. It tied him to something familiar, and forced him to focus on growth:

I've essentially been working seven days a week since the lockdown began. It's been highly productive and it's one of the things that's kept me sane throughout the pandemic. It's also how I managed to triple Gravity's revenue. Good thing too, because my previous company is failing as a result of COVID.

Kyle used work as a coping mechanism, and was starting to notice the rising tides of growth. However, culture shock and anxiety soon set in:

I have a lot of lifestyle hacks in Thailand...my lifestyle in Belfast is very different. Plus, there's the weather. That's been a challenge.

Recently, the pandemic has been causing a lot of anxiety for me. My productivity and inspiration have started to decline.

Although Kyle had high levels of productivity, inspiration was low. This made it difficult to move forward, but he found a way out of the mental block:

I'm so excited to be flying back to Thailand this month. I'll have to spend two weeks in quarantine, which sounds daunting, but I have a hack-a-thon planned to make the time as productive as possible. Then it's off to Koh Phangan to work by the beach. It's time for me to get inspired and be productive again so I can 4x revenue in 2021.

Kyle's advice to other indie hackers:

• You don't need a lot of ad spend to grow your business rapidly. Kyle did it primarily through his blog, email list, Youtube, and Twitter.
• Hard situations often have a hidden opportunity waiting within. Making the most of a situation can pay dividends.
• If you're losing inspiration, make a change. Find your muse. Grinding can only take you so far.
• A little sunshine can work wonders.

Kyle was able to be hyper-productive due to his lack of distractions, but that's not the same as being inspired. Without inspiration, the productivity didn't last.

Where do you find your inspiration? What are your tips for tapping into it when you're feeling low?

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Milestone Road for more.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Nicky Milner, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing