Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we should all be watching Coinbase’s IPO carefully and wishing ‘em well. Then again, Coinbase doesn’t really need our crossed fingers. The company has had a stellar Q1 with revenues up by nearly three quarters to almost $2 billion. More importantly even than its financials, Coinbase could not have timed it better, with trillion-dollar Covid stimuli about to wreak havoc on the world’s fiat currencies.

But significant as Coinbase’s IPO is for the industry, let’s not misunderstand this milestone. This is by no means the end of the journey towards Bitcoin hegemony; it is not even the home straight. It is, however, the end of the beginning.

In the short term this will keep the spotlight focused on crypto, garnering more exposure and ‘legitimacy’ for Bitcoin within the traditional financial industry while providing another proxy for buying coins, just as we saw with Microstrategy or Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust. That’s all gravy for the Bitcoin space, of course, but it will accelerate the transformation of the industry into something wholly different.

Because here’s what I expect to happen in the medium term. Coinbase’s numbers will attract any number of banks, payment providers and traditional fiat-based financial institutions like moths to a flame. Wanting in on the crypto action, they will start offering their own customers the ability to buy Bitcoin, and inadvertently open up the adoption floodgates further.

But as more users flock to Bitcoin, the clamour for self-sovereignty, greater simplicity, and fewer middlemen becomes even louder. This demand will be met by advances like the Lightning Network, Liquid, and the RGB protocol, which are already being developed at pace, and will ultimately mature to the point where they surpass centralised platforms. In parallel, increased corporate adoption will reduce and then eliminate the need to convert in and out of Bitcoin.

Just look at Caruso, one of California’s biggest real estate owners, which this week announced it will start accepting payment in Bitcoin. Add to this Tesla’s announcement that it would allow purchases of its cars in Bitcoin and people can now pay for their accommodation, transport and basic needs without ever having to touch fiat.

Tesla and Caruso are among the businesses that have shown us glimpses of what this future might look like, but there is much more work to be done before Bitcoin 2.0 becomes a widespread reality. A more accurate comparison to our current “crypto IPO” stage of development is the early days of the web when companies like AOL and Yahoo! ruled the roost. These early internet businesses may no longer be leaders, but they laid the foundations for the future hegemony, known as the World Wide Web, that dominates today.
Bitcoin will go through the same transformation, the difference being that we have a much clearer idea of what the world looks like when it has achieved hegemony.