Rap icon Nas may end up making up to $100 million when Coinbase goes public and hits the NASDAQ.
According to CoinDesk, Nas created the QueensBridge Venture Partners investment firm, which invested in Coinbase back in 2013. Queensbridge Venture Partners was part of Coinbase’s Series B round of fundraising, when it helped raise $25 million in that round. At the time of the Series B round, Coinbase was valued at $143 million.
On April 14, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) is going public with its offering, and it’s expected to get a $100 billion valuation as a result.
So what does that mean, for Nas and Queensbridge?
In a nutshell, it boils down to math. It’s estimated that the “Ether” rapper owns anywhere from nearly 100,000 to almost 500,000 shares in Coinbase. As of this writing, Coinbase is trading at $350 a share on private, secondary markets, which means that Nas’ assets — using that metric — are somewhere between about $35 million and $174 million.
But when it goes public, Coinbase is expected to trade at a target of $450 a share. If we use that metric, Nas’ assets will be between about $44 million and $219 million.
Even if he sells only half of those shares when the company goes public, he will net somewhere in the $100 million range.
In the past, Nas — through Queensbridge — has invested in such companies as Ring, Lyft, Robinhood, and Dropbox. When Amazon acquired Ring back in 2018, he took home around $40 million in the deal.
Other Coinbase investors poised to make a big payday include the endowment fund of Duke University (Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam’s alma mater) and angels like former Reuters CEO Tom Glocer and former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, all of whom were investors in the company.
