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Coinbase stock has risen by nearly one-third over the past month.
Dreamstime
The launch of two Bitcoin futures ETFs last week isn’t only fueling a rally in the cryptocurrency. It is also leading to more bullish calls on
Coinbase Global, one of the largest cryptocurrency brokerages.
Coinbase (ticker: COIN) stock has been on a roll for weeks, rising alongside Bitcoin on hopes that the cryptocurrency would make it into exchange-traded funds. That happened last week with the launch of the
ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF
(ticker: BITO) and the
Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF
(BTF), which both use futures contracts for their Bitcoin exposure.
Now, Coinbase is winning more praise from analysts who see the brokerage benefiting from a broad shift toward Bitcoin as it delves deeper into brokerage accounts, payments, and card services used by millions of Americans.
Piper Sandler analyst Richard Repetto reiterated an Overweight rating and raised his target on the stock to $360 on Monday. The launch of futures ETFs is a sign that the Securities and Exchange Commission isn’t going to try to shut down all cryptos, he said. And the futures ETFs should lead to higher trading volumes for the currency over time.
Repetto also sees Coinbase benefiting from another development: the launch of
Bakkt Holdings (BKKT), a digital-asset platform that went public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company on Oct. 18. Bakkt said Monday that it had signed a deal with
Mastercard (MA) and
Fiserv (FISV), aiming to offer crypto payment and card services, loyalty programs, and custodial wallets, potentially even leading to branded crypto debit and credit cards.
“We believe this is another example pointing to the greater mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies central to our positive thesis on COIN and its sole focus on servicing the crypto economy,” Repetto said.
Citigroup is also climbing on the Coinbase train. Analyst Peter Christiansen launched coverage of the stock on Tuesday with a Buy rating and $415 target. “As a crypto-economy facilitator, we see the stock positioned to make ‘higher highs and higher lows’ relative to crypto volatility as adoption increases,” Christiansen wrote.
Coinbase should benefit from services beyond brokerage, including providing things like cold-storage wallets, markets for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, new decentralized-finance applications, and lending, he said.
Even assuming crypto prices stay flat, he said, the stock should reach $415, under a valuation based on the discounted value of Coinbase’s likely future cash flows.
Coinbase shares were down 1.2% on Tuesday to $321. That leaves the stock up 32% over the past month. Bitcoin was trading around $62,000 on Tuesday morning, down 2% over the past 24 hours.
Write to Daren Fonda at daren.fonda@barrons.com