New York, Jan 7, 2026, 12:43 PM EST — Regular session
- Coinbase shares fall 1.6% in midday trade as bitcoin and ether ease
- A filing shows director Fred Wilson sold 10,000 shares under a pre-set 10b5-1 plan
- Analyst views diverge on whether trading volumes are slowing too fast
Shares of Coinbase Global, Inc. (COIN) were down 1.6% at $246.50 on Wednesday, after trading as low as $245.48 and as high as $254.35. Bitcoin slipped 0.7% to about $91,488 and ether fell 2.4% to roughly $3,160, cooling risk appetite across crypto-linked stocks.
The U.S. crypto exchange’s stock often tracks swings in digital assets because a large share of its revenue still comes from transaction fees. When prices chop around, traders look for one thing: volume. If customers don’t trade, the fee pool dries up.
That matters now because investors are trying to work out whether the early-year bounce in crypto will translate into sustained activity, or fade into another short run. The stock has also become a liquid stand-in for broader U.S. crypto sentiment, which can turn fast when rates and growth expectations shift.
A regulatory filing on Tuesday showed Coinbase director Frederick R. Wilson sold 10,000 shares on Jan. 2 for roughly $2.34 million. The sales were made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan — a pre-arranged program that can let insiders trade on a set schedule — adopted on Aug. 7, 2025, the filing said. SEC
On Monday, Goldman Sachs analyst James Yaro upgraded Coinbase to Buy and raised his price target to $303 from $294, TipRanks reported. Yaro pointed to Coinbase’s scale — including 9.5 million monthly transacting users, about $500 billion in customer assets under custody and a 48% share of the U.S. crypto exchange market — and said newer products “give it exposure to what we view as structural growth tokenization and prediction markets.” (Tokenization is using blockchain rails to represent real-world assets; prediction markets let users trade on event outcomes.) TipRanks
Not everyone is leaning in. Rosenblatt cut its price target to $325 from $470 while keeping a Buy rating, saying Coinbase’s trading volumes have “decelerated materially” and pegging fourth-quarter total trading volume at about $207 billion, down 35% from its prior estimate. TipRanks
The broader backdrop is also shifting as large banks try to package crypto exposure into mainstream products. Morgan Stanley filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to launch ETFs tied to bitcoin and solana, and Morningstar ETF analyst Bryan Armour said: “A bank entering the crypto ETF market adds legitimacy to it, and others could follow.” (An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a fund that trades on an exchange like a stock.)
Outside ETFs, banks are also circling stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to a traditional currency — as settlement plumbing. Barclays bought a stake in U.S. startup Ubyx, Reuters reported, and Ubyx has previously raised money from crypto firms Coinbase and Galaxy Digital; Reuters also cited stablecoin leader Tether as circulating $187 billion in tokens.
But the stock’s downside case is still simple: fewer trades, weaker fees, and a sharper-than-expected drop in retail risk-taking. Crypto prices can move on policy headlines and leverage unwindings, and that can swamp company-specific efforts to broaden revenue.
Next up, traders are watching Friday’s U.S. monthly jobs report (Jan. 9) for clues on rates and risk appetite. Coinbase has not yet announced the date for its fourth-quarter results; Wall Street Horizon lists an unconfirmed Feb. 19 release after the close. Reuters
