Forbes: $300,000 invested by venture investor in Coinbase turned into $565 million

In 2012 and 2013, Initialized Capital, the venture firm of angel investor Garry Tan, invested $300,000 in Brian Armstrong’s Coinbase. After the listing of the bitcoin exchange on Nasdaq, these investments turned into hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Forbes.

The initial combined seed investments by Initialized in the now-largest American cryptocurrency company were converted into a 0.66% stake. This amounts to about $565 million, based on Coinbase’s valuation of roughly $85.7 billion at a first-day close of $328.

The venture firm increased its stake in the exchange by participating in Series C (2015) and Series E (2018) rounds to $1.3 million. This raised its stake in Coinbase to 0.8%, amounting to a total equity package of $680 million.

Tan said, looking back, he would certainly have liked to invest more in Coinbase.

“It’s easy to look back and say: of course this should have happened, but at the moment it was really hard to have high conviction to push forward and do this round after round. We didn’t always have the capital for that,” the investor said.

The firm invested $50,000 in Coinbase twice in 2012, and in January of the following year managed to allocate $200,000 to the startup. That same period saw the exchange gain co-founder Fred Ehrsam and major venture investors who received sizable stakes in the company, the business publication noted.

According to WSJ reporter Rolfe Winkler, Coinbase shares went to Initialized and Tan at $0.15 per share. The reporter listed the prices paid by other early investors:

• Union Square Ventures and Ribbit Capital — $0.20;
• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) — $1;
• DFJ Growth — $2.76;
• IVP — $8.25;
• Paradigm — $23.

identified American rapper Nas among the exchange’s early investors. The package of Coinbase shares owned by the venture capital firm of which he is a cofounder is estimated at between $34 million and $173 million.

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