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By Jeff Benson
In brief
Coinbase isn’t the only crypto company selling shares this week.
Exodus, the creator of a popular non-custodial crypto wallet, has raised $60 million since April 8 by selling stock in the company. It’s calling the sale, which was cleared by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the largest “regulated crypto public offering” ever.
Last week, the company put $75 million in shares up for sale at $27.42 apiece. However, instead of accepting US dollars, Exodus only took a trio of crypto assets commonly stored in its wallets: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC stablecoin. Its plan is to tokenize the shares on a public blockchain within nine months.
The Regulation A sale allowed the firm to reach beyond accredited (read: well-to-do) investors to those often left out of securities sales. “Think of this as the 2021 version of an ICO—compliant, transparent, and offered by a profitable company with a working product,” Exodus COO Sebastián Milla Goñi told Decrypt in March.
ICOs, or initial coin offerings, allowed crypto startups to raise money from everyday people. In exchange for providing crypto startups with capital, investors would receive tokens that could later be used on that project’s platform. Though tremendously popular, the SEC all but nixed the concept back in 2018, viewing them as unregulated securities offerings.
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Blockchain project Stacks (née Blockstack) was the first crypto company to get permission from the SEC to conduct a token sale, raising $23 million. Trading platform INX is in the middle of what it hopes is a $117 million registered token offering.
According to an April 12 press release from Exodus, over 4,000 people have committed to investing in Exodus stock, with 92% of commitments coming from non-accredited investors.
The sale remains open to US investors outside of the states of Arizona, Florida, and Texas.
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