Digital currency exchange platform Coinbase has filed to go public through a direct public offering. Despite taking a purely defensive stance on software patents — since 2015, the company has claimed it will not use patents offensively and has joined the Crypto Open Patent Alliance — Coinbase has a robust patent portfolio that will surely help the company as it goes public.

Coinbase filed a series of patents in 2015 covering a variety of payment system technologies. The filings were considered fairly scandalous given the cryptocurrency community’s culture of open-source technology, leading the CEO to explain the necessity of patents and the company's defensive position. After two years of inactivity, Coinbase resumed steady filing and has adopted a continuation practice in many of its later applications, which means that those patents can claim the priority date of the original 2015 filings. The company is currently valuated at around $90B. Even if Coinbase does not pursue litigation, its patents are still valuable as protection as well as for licensing and partnership purposes and provide a more stable revenue streams in a volatile cryptocurrency market. With over 40 patents and applications, Coinbase has a larger portfolio than most other exchange platforms, including Square. You can keep up with Coinbase's development and see how it compares with other companies on the Cryptocurrency Patent Forecast®.