Prices as of 11:40 a.m. EST

Coinbase has been valued at more than $100B in a secondary market valuation. The company is likely to go public at the largest valuation of a tech company since Facebook's $104B IPO.

More:

• Coinbase reported revenue of $530M for 2019 and $691M for the first nine months in 2020. The company posted a net income of $141M between January-September 2020, up from a loss of $30M in overall 2019. Notably, these numbers don't include 2021, when the Bitcoin price surged more than 90% YTD.
• The company sold 75,000 shares at a valuation of $54B in January and $77B last week. 
• Coinbase's valuation over the years:
  • 2016 — $500M
  • 2017 — $1.6B
  • 2018 — $8B
  • 2020 — $100B
• Coinbase has raised $547M in VC funding to date, and its backers include Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bank of Tokyo. The company has the license to operate in 100+ countries.

Another $100B valuation:

• Last week, payments company Stripe was valued at $115B in the secondary market, up from the $36B valuation in April 2020.

This story first appeared in Inside VC. You may read it here.

Bitfinex, iFinex, and Tether (USDT) have agreed to submit regular reports to the Office of Attorney General (OAG) to ensure that they do not conduct business with New York residents.

• The OAG investigation found that starting in 2017, during certain periods of time, USDT had no access to banking anywhere in the world and held no dollars to back its tethers in circulation at the rate of one dollar per USDT.
• The parties signed a Settlement Agreement, which is not a final court order and is not the result of a trial nor adjudication.
• Bitfinex and Tether Glomared New York Attorney General Letitia James' accusations, neither confirming nor denying the findings of the Settlement Agreement.
• Officials who control Bitfinex and the affiliated stablecoin USDT agreed to pay $18.5M to settle allegations that they hid losses, commingled funds inappropriately, and lied about their reserves.

Writer’s note: I will dedicate all of tomorrow’s edition to today’s Tether news, which has hundreds of pages of associated dockets and details. Tether has framed the news as positive due to the small settlement amount, but the OAG has revealed many more details in its Settlement Agreement and opened the possibility for further investigations by other states or the federal government.

The price of Ethereum (ETH) fell 50% on Kraken exchange.

• Kraken’s ETH/USD trading pair printed trades as low as $700.
• Customers asked if there was a trading engine malfunction. Powell said there was no evidence of an exchange error: "It seems like trades processed accurately."
• Powell speculated on a possible cause: "It could be that a single whale just decided to dump his life savings."
• He said that Kraken is "unlikely to roll back trades," but is "looking into" compensating individuals who were severely affected by the price.

Apex Clearing, which clears crypto via Apex Crypto LLC, is preparing for a $4.7B IPO via a merger with Northern Star Investment Corp. II.

• Apex Clearing Holdings LLC, a Texas-based clearing company, will list its shares on NYSE under the ticker symbol "APX" after the merger deal closes with Northern Star Investment Corp. II, a blank-check Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).  
• Apex could receive up to $850M in cash and an additional $450M via private placement. Baron Capital Group, Fidelity Management & Research Co. LLC, and Winslow Capital Management LLC backed the deal.
• Apex Clearing Holdings also has a business unit called Apex Pro that works as a clearing partner for professional trading companies.
• Northern Star II, backed by Jonathan Ledecky and ex-Hearst Magazines executive Joanna Coles, raised $350M last month.

Click to tweet the following text (you can edit it before sending): Apex Clearing @apexclearing and its Apex Crypto to go public on NYSE after a merger with Northern Star Investment Corp $APX

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• Bitcoin fell as low as $45,000 this morning. Yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellon called bitcoin "extremely inefficient" after its price dropped significantly.
• In India, billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has asked Indian regulators to ban bitcoin.
• South Korea's financial watchdog, the Financial Intelligence Unit, stated that all privacy coins, such as Zcash (ZEC), Monero (XMR), and DASH (DASH), will be delisted from domestic crypto exchanges.
• Payments company Ripple is registered in Wyoming as "active" (under Ripple Markets WY LLC), according to records from the Wyoming Secretary of State. Ripple's registered agent is the Cheyenne-based Corporation Service Company.
• Wedbush Securities estimated in a recent note that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) made nearly $1B profit over the previous month due to bitcoin's price — more profit from its bitcoin investment than from selling vehicles last year.
• MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) reportedly sent investors a note mentioning that the business intelligence company closed a debt offering worth $1.05B on Feb. 19, 2021. The company is using the proceeds to buy more bitcoin.
• Figure Acquisition Corp., a black check company related to Mike Cagney's blockchain lending startup Figure, shared its plan to offer 25M of NYSE-listed units under ticker symbol FACA.U and raise approximately $250M.
• Bitcoin is worth approximately 10% of the value of the world's mined gold.
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