Coinbase COIN Jumps +8% as Goldman Flips Bullish on Crypto Stock

Ben Graham · January 6

In H2 2025, COIN, the stock behind Coinbase, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, tanked by nearly -50%. Starting off 2026 decently, is Coinbase ready to defy gravity? Looks like so.

After days of sideways chop, there are hints of strength. On Monday, COIN jumped by about +8% after Goldman Sachs upgraded COIN from “neutral” to “buy” and raised its 12‑month target from $294 to $303.

The stock traded around $255 after the move, which implies roughly +18% upside if Goldman’s new target plays out.

The reassessment is bullish, and specifically comes as big banks quietly warm back up to crypto and start treating exchanges less like casinos and more like future financial infrastructure.

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The Goldman Sachs Upgrade: Bullish For Coinbase and Crypto?

When a bank like Goldman Sachs upgrades a stock, it sends a simple signal to Wall Street: “We think this business now looks more like a long‑term winner than a speculative bet.”

For Coinbase, that shift matters because the company used to rely heavily on trading fees that went up and down with hype. Now, analysts at Goldman say they like the parts of Coinbase that build “crypto infrastructure” rather than just run a trading floor.

In a report, Goldman Sachs’ analysts led by James Yaro, said they expected traditional banks and crypto to work more closely in 2026. Even with this, competition would increase

“We expect the meeting of traditional retail brokerage and crypto trading to continue in 2026, driving increasing competition, potentially impacting market share and product pricing. While it continues to offer healthy growth, competition is intensifying across its core market and products, potentially driving higher customer acquisition costs and pricing, and impacting planned US expansion.”

The endorsement is positive for crypto, and especially crypto exchanges that are more like shovel sellers during the gold rush.

In this case, traders searching for the next 100X coins are the people digging for gold. Infrastructure companies are the ones selling shovels, maps, and security.

Goldman now treats Coinbase more like a “shovel seller” in a future digital finance world. That shift helps reduce how “all‑or‑nothing” the Coinbase story feels for nervous investors.

Coinbase spent 2025 and early 2026 turning itself into an “everything exchange” that doesn’t just let you buy Bitcoin, but also trades stocks, supports prediction markets, and works on tokenized assets.

As 99Bitcoins reported, this strategy lines up with its own 2026 plan to lean into ETFs, stablecoins, and tokenization.

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Will This Impact The Crypto Market?

Goldman’s move doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Other big players like Morgan Stanley now file for Bitcoin and Solana ETFs. That tells us something simple but powerful: traditional finance wants crypto exposure, and it prefers to get it through regulated products and listed companies. Coinbase sits right at that intersection.

In Q3 2025, Coinbase received $355M from USDC revenue in Q3 2025, up 7% QoQ. Since USDC is stable and rarely fluctuates like some of the top Solana meme coins, revenue becomes more predictable than trading fees.

For investors, that feels more like a fintech company and less like a casino chip factory.

Goldman’s analyst also pointed to tokenization (turning real‑world things like bonds or stocks into blockchain tokens) and prediction markets as growth areas.

Coinbase already moved into prediction markets through a Kalshi partnership, and its CEO Brian Armstrong keeps talking about Base, its Ethereum layer‑2 network, as a key part of the future.