Make no mistake, it is a race. The first to IPO will win a tremendous brand boost among merchants and consumers and that is what they need more than anything.

None of the ventures need to IPO to raise money. The VC funds have plenty of cash and desire to invest in Bitcoin.

The IPO bar is really high today. I doubt that any of these ventures has the financial metrics to do an IPO in today’s market.

Ok, enough of the 90s Internet nostalgia, some of our Millenial colleagues were not even born then! The point is simple that all the references to the Bitcoin era being like the Internet before the Netscape IPO miss the point that “history does not repeat, but it may rhyme”.

Don’t bury the lede my inner editor is saying. The two candidates to win the Bitcoin venture race to IPO are – drum roll please:

Coinbase

Bitpay

Why these two:

– well funded (meaning investors want a big exit)

– head to head competitors. The first one to IPO may leave the other one in the dust.

– both target mainstream merchants and consumers and so will benefit greatly from the branding event known as IPO.

Reality check: I doubt that this will be any time soon. The trend is against letting retail investors punt on risky tech ventures. That has to be left to professional investors in order to protect us. (I think that is a mistake and damns retail investors with low expectations but that is just an opinion). So these ventures will probably grow quietly in private hands.