Cryptocurrencies have quickly become one of the most popular investment vehicles of the past decade, winning first among retail traders, as seen in 2017, and now institutional investors.
From a domain of bedroom coders to a growing financial industry with a market cap of over $ 2,000 billion, the crypto space has seen a sudden surge in value and continues to garner huge interest from the share of investors.
Although crypto assets have proven to be valuable, volatility remains a major concern, especially for institutional players. Of course, any investor can buy cryptocurrencies and profit from their growing value. However, investing in established companies involved in the crypto and blockchain industry is another way to branch out and take advantage of the global adoption of everything blockchain and crypto related.
This gives investors exposure to an investment vehicle with a low correlation with volatile price movements in the crypto market.
Here’s a look at some of the leading publicly traded digital asset companies available to retail and institutional investors.
Coinbase
Coinbase’s direct listing on the Nasdaq in April of this year was a turning point for the entire cryptocurrency market. Boasting the highest volume of crypto transactions for a crypto exchange in the United States, Coinbase debuted on the Nasdaq as a publicly traded company with a valuation of nearly $ 100 billion. Coinbase chose to go for a direct listing as opposed to the conventional initial public offering.
Founded by Fred Ersham and Brian Armstrong in 2012, Coinbase provides crypto trading services to over 40 million retail users and approximately 7,000 institutions around the world. While its main source of income has been transaction fees on its crypto exchange, Coinbase hopes to go beyond commerce to offer a debit card that allows consumers to spend their digital assets in a convenient way. Coinbase also offers a cloud-based digital asset custody service, asset lending service, and data monitoring service for digital assets on the blockchain.
Related: Coinbase Launches Standalone Browser Extension For Coinbase Wallet
Microstrategy
Microstrategy is a software company with over 40% of its market valuation invested in Bitcoin (BTC). The company has increased its reserve of Bitcoin over the past year with a cumulative purchase of Bitcoin worth over $ 5 billion at current prices.
With over 100,000 BTC to its name, Microstrategy has grown from relative obscurity in the financial world to a crypto giant and well-known company on Wall Street. Company CEO Michael Saylor, a Bitcoin evangelist, regularly presents Bitcoin on social media as a breakthrough invention and has also championed the company’s decision to aggressively invest in crypto.
Recently, MicroStrategy sold $ 1 billion of its stock holdings to inject the proceeds from acquiring more Bitcoin. Since the company announced its Bitcoin debut, Microstrategy’s share price has climbed more than 400%.
Related: MicroStrategy Added 9K BTC Last Quarter, Its Reserve Now Worth $ 7 Billion
Riot blockchain
Riot Blockchain is an American publicly traded mining company that uses a host of specialized machines called application-specific integrated circuits to mine Bitcoin. Recently, the Bitcoin mining company took a deeper dive into the business with the purchase of a Bitcoin hosting facility in North America called Whinstone US.
In a press release, Jason Les, CEO of Riot Blockchain, said, “With Whinstone’s preeminent infrastructure and the best organization to build, develop and operate, Riot is extremely well positioned to scale up to scale. and the scope of its operations.
Whinstone’s energy management strategy would help Riot Blockchain manage its Bitcoin mining energy costs, enabling access to reliable and responsive power to further support the Bitcoin network.
Riot Blockchain receives its mining machines from Bitmain and hosts over 35,000 Antminers, leading to a hash rate capacity of 3.8 EH / s.
Related: Industrial Bitcoin Mining Brings New Life To Small Texas Town
Pay Pal
While PayPal stock isn’t purely a crypto game, the company has opened its doors to digital currencies, allowing customers with personal accounts to buy, sell, and hold multiple cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. . Customers on PayPal can go so far as to verify with crypto even though the company continues to test the concept of allowing crypto on its platform.
Since digital assets and crypto are the future of finance, PayPal’s adoption of crypto is an initiative to increase the use of its app among retail investors, as well as facilitate further transactions between customers and traders.
In addition, the CEO of the company has mentioned crypto several times, adding that its crypto functionality is not a speculative movement but rather a development movement that will provide customers with more choices when shopping online.
Related: PayPal Records Biggest Bitcoin Volume Since May BTC Price Crash
Marathon Digital Holdings
Marathon Digital is a Nasdaq-listed company that recently saw its stock price rise due to its Bitcoin purchases and mining activities. In May of this year, the company released a letter of intent to work with Compute North to host a Bitcoin mining data center with a capacity of 300 megawatts.
So far, the company has seen tremendous progress with a 1,444% year-over-year revenue increase with a crowd of over 70,000 Bitcoin miners pegging its hash rate at 10, 37 pE / s. Given the growing concerns about Bitcoin’s mining energy and recent developments, Marathons Digital expects its operation to achieve carbon neutrality of up to 70%.
Marathon Digital’s balance sheet shows around 18.3% of its total valuation invested in cash and Bitcoin, and continues to buy more Bitcoin as well as store the crypto it produces at much larger percentages. According to reports, Marathon Digital is able to mine over 50 Bitcoins per day, setting the company’s value at over $ 5 billion.
Related: Marathon Digital Stock Hits Highest Level In 6 Years As HODL Company Brings $ 460 Million From Bitcoin
Hut 8 Mining
Hut 8 Mining offers a unique approach to Bitcoin mining with a business model designed with scalability in mind. Considered one of the most promising Canadian-based mining and blockchain infrastructure companies, the company mined 264 Bitcoin in September alone, an average of around 9.11 BTC mined per day.
The company has adopted a long-term Bitcoin custody strategy in which 100% of self-mined Bitcoins are deposited into custody as the company moves towards its goal of holding 5,000 self-mined Bitcoins by the end of the year. year. As of September 30, Hut 8 Mining had accumulated 4,724 Bitcoins in custody.
Related: Hut 8 Crypto Miner Plans To Hold 5K Bitcoin By 2022
EQONEX Group
EQONEX Group is a digital asset company offering financial advisory services. This Nasdaq-listed company has since changed its name with the inclusion of additional services such as a crypto exchange, a custodial platform and a multi-company trading service, as well as an over-the-counter (OTC ).
With a Nasdaq listing in September 2020, EQONEX has since become the first crypto-related company to be listed on the Nasdaq. So far, its crypto exchange has grown, reaching a 24-hour transaction volume of over $ 260 million and a 30-day volume of $ 4.5 billion.
Although not one of the largest crypto exchanges, EQONEX touts its regulatory compliance and the fact that it does not make markets, thus avoiding the conflict of trading against its clients.
Growing institutional interest
Investing in stocks of digital asset companies offers a distinct advantage, as the investor is not directly exposed to the volatile market movements that disrupt the rest of the crypto market.
Investing in crypto-related businesses also offers an investor the ability to avoid the complexities of buying and securely storing digital assets, while still exposing the investor to the benefits of the crypto industry. crypto and blockchain.
Whether investing directly or indirectly, it has never been easier for institutional capital to flow into the crypto and digital asset market, given the growing number of digital asset companies whose shares are publicly traded on exchanges such as the Nasdaq.
Even companies such as Nvidia and AMD are increasingly contributing to the crypto and blockchain industry through the use of their graphics processing units in crypto mining. These are just a few choices among the many publicly traded digital asset companies that investors can turn to when it comes to traditional avenues of crypto investing.
