Gemini Secures $50M Nasdaq Investment Ahead Of IPO

Crypto exchange Gemini, founded by billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has secured Nasdaq as both a listing partner and an investor ahead of the company’s proposed initial public offering (IPO).

Gemini aims to debut on the Nasdaq this Friday under the ticker “GEMI,” a timeline that is still dependent on market conditions, according to a Reuters report that cited sources familiar with the matter.

Nasdaq will buy $50 million worth of the crypto exchange’s shares in a private placement at the time of the IPO, which aims to raise more than $300 million.

That’s after Gemini said last week that it plans to selling 16,666,667 shares of its Class A common stock at between $17 and $19 per share. The exchange will also grant underwriters a 30-day option to buy an additional 2,396,348 shares. 

The exchange’s arrangement with Nasdaq will extend to giving Nasdaq’s clients access to Gemini’s custody and staking services. 

Meanwhile, Gemini’s institutional clients will be able to use elements of Nasdaq’s Calypso platform, including its collateral management features that help track and manage margin trading collateral and activity. 

Gemini The Latest Crypto Company To Go Public This Year

Gemini’s IPO filing follows multiple successful public debuts for crypto companies this year. 

In June, stablecoin issuer Circle, the company behind USD Coin (USDC), completed its IPO and raised approximately $1.1 billion. It achieved a debut valuation of $6.9 billion, after its shares more than doubled in their first trading session.

Circle IPO on the NYSE (Source: X)

Crypto exchange platform Bullish, which is backed by billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, also went public in the middle of August. The company’s shares were priced at $37, and the IPO raised about $1.1 billion. It hit a peak market cap of $13 billion but now stands at a fraction under $8 billion. 

On Sept. 3, the Trump family-backed American Bitcoin started trading on Nasdaq after fast-tracking its public debut by merging with Gryphon Digital Mining. 

Strong first-day performances of the newly-listed crypto companies and other firms like Figma have encouraged more private firms to test investor appetite, the Reuters report said.

If Gemini’s IPO is completed on Friday, it would make the company the third publicly-traded US crypto exchange, following Bullish and Coinbase, which was the first crypto trading platform to join the S&P 500 index. 

Nasdaq Makes Tokenized Stocks Push

Nasdaq’s arrangement with Gemini comes just 24 hours after the stock exchange filed a request with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list tokenized stocks. 

Nasdaq requests rule change for tokenized stocks (Source: X)

Nasdaq specifically asked the SEC to amend certain rules in its filing, including what the definition of a security is. It also asked that tokenized stocks on the blockchain be treated as traditional stocks so that they can be traded under the same execution and documentation rules. 

Nasdaq argued that tokenized US stocks should be available via established and regulated market players, and not just on “siloed trading venues.”

It expressed concerns regarding multiple offerings of tokenized US stocks trading in Europe. 

“A few trading platforms are purporting to offer investors access to tokenized US ‘equities,’ but they are not providing investors with actual shares in US companies,” Nasdaq wrote.

Gemini is one of the service providers behind those offerings, and rolled out tokenized shares for Strategy (MSTR) and other companies in June.

Gemini Expands In Europe

Gemini is also deepening its presence in Europe. In a blog post last week, the exchange announced a suite of new products for over 400 million investors across the European Union and European Economic Area. 

Those products include Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH) staking products, as well as a regulated derivatives offering that lets customers trade contracts with up to 100X leverage and no fixed expiration dates. 

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