Coinbase opens US IPO access with Oura listing

Coinbase has opened initial public offering access to eligible U.S.

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Coinbase has opened initial public offering access to eligible U.S. retail customers, starting with Oura’s $2.2 billion offering, as COIN shares gained more than 5% on Sep. 21.

Summary

• Coinbase users can request Oura shares at the IPO price before public trading begins.
• Oura is offering 50 million shares at an expected price of $40 to $44.
• Selling allocated shares within 30 days may trigger a 60-day IPO access restriction.
• COIN rose 5.7% to $205.38 following the announcement.

Coinbase IPO access starts with Oura

Coinbase said in a Sep. 21 announcement that eligible U.S. retail customers can request IPO allocations through its mobile application, beginning with smart-ring maker Oura’s public offering this week.

Customers can open the IPO section of the Coinbase app, select an active deal, and fund their accounts to cover the requested shares. Once an expected price range becomes public, users can submit a conditional offer to buy the stock.

Investors may change or cancel an offer while the order book remains open. Coinbase said customers must submit another request if the IPO price rises above a limit attached to the original offer.

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After the order book closes, Coinbase will distribute the available shares using its allocation system. Demand and the number of shares provided by the underwriters will determine whether each request receives a full allocation, a partial allocation, or no shares.

Allocated stock will enter the customer’s account at the final IPO price. Trading through Coinbase will start when the shares begin changing hands on the public market.

Oura and its existing shareholders are offering 50 million shares at between $40 and $44 each, according to Reuters. At the top of the range, the deal would raise as much as $2.2 billion and give the company a fully diluted valuation of about $15.62 billion.

The maker of wearable rings plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker OURA. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are serving as the lead underwriters, while Eli Lilly has expressed interest in buying up to $100 million of shares and Dragoneer may purchase up to $300 million, Reuters reported.

Oura generated $1.21 billion in revenue during the nine months through June 30, representing a 74% increase from the same period a year earlier, according to the report.

Allocation rules favor longer holding periods

Coinbase said its allocation method will favor customers who appear more likely to retain their shares instead of selling shortly after an IPO begins trading.

Investors who dispose of allocated shares during the first 30 days may lose access to upcoming IPOs for 60 days. Repeated early sales could also result in smaller allocations or fewer opportunities compared with users who hold their shares longer.

“Our allocation algorithm prioritizes investors who believe in what they’re purchasing for the long haul,” the company said.

IPO shares will be offered through Coinbase Capital Markets, the exchange’s Financial Industry Regulatory Authority-registered broker-dealer. Securities accounts and crypto accounts will remain separate, and Securities Investor Protection Corporation coverage will not apply to digital assets or cash held with Coinbase’s crypto business.

Before requesting shares, each customer must complete a standard FINRA questionnaire designed to identify people who may face restrictions on participating in an offering.

Coinbase Capital Markets will act as a best-efforts selling-group member, collecting customer requests and sending them to Apex Clearing Corporation. The broker will act as an agent rather than an underwriter, meaning it will not purchase inventory or take the opposite side of customer orders.

Execution, custody, and clearing will be handled by Apex. Coinbase said additional IPOs will become available when its broker-dealer receives allocations from future selling groups.

IPO investing adds to Coinbase’s Everything Exchange

The IPO service adds another U.S. securities product to Coinbase’s plan to combine crypto, stocks, derivatives and other investments in one application.

“This new feature is yet another step toward growing the Everything Exchange, as our US customers now gain early exposure to high-interest companies before they hit public exchanges,” Coinbase said.

During a June product event, the company introduced an SEC-registered automated investment adviser alongside stock options, crypto options, prediction markets and equity index products. As crypto.news previously reported, Coinbase also disclosed plans for private-company derivatives tied to OpenAI and Anthropic.

Unlike the new IPO service, those pre-IPO perpetual contracts do not give investors company shares. The derivatives provide price exposure to a private business without ownership, voting rights, or a direct claim on its stock.

Coinbase began offering such contracts outside the United States with a SpaceX-linked perpetual before adding planned products connected to OpenAI and Anthropic. A June report on the contracts noted that pricing private-company derivatives can be difficult because the underlying businesses do not trade continuously on public exchanges.

Within the United States, Coinbase has also submitted registrations related to single-stock perpetual contracts. Two filings dated Sep. 1 seek to register Coinbase Derivatives as a security futures exchange and Coinbase Financial Markets as a limited-purpose security futures broker-dealer, according to a report on the filings.

Single-stock futures fall under the joint authority of the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Coinbase has not provided a launch date, leverage limits or a final list of shares for the proposed U.S. contracts.

Outside the country, the company has already issued tokenized versions of U.S. stocks backed by securities held through an offshore structure and a regulated American broker. The products remain unavailable to U.S. persons under the current Regulation S offering, although verified overseas holders can request redemption. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has said the structure is based on real underlying shares rather than synthetic exposure or unsecured debt.

COIN stock gains more than 5%

Coinbase shares rose 5.7% to $205.38 during U.S. trading on Sep. 21, adding $11.13 from the previous close. COIN opened at $205.05 and traded between $196.48 and $208.28 during the session.

Trading volume had reached 7.73 million shares by 3:15 p.m. UTC, while the company’s market capitalization stood at approximately $54.1 billion.

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