By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) shares rose 4% in Friday’s trading as the crypto exchange continues to dazzle stakeholders two days after its Nasdaq debut.
Loop Capital analyst Kenneth Hill is the latest to join its list of admirers, initiating coverage of the crypto exchange with a buy rating and a $394 target, an upside of 17% from the stock's current price.
Coinbase, which listed directly, briefly touched a $100 billion market capitalization the same day. Its reference listing price was set at $250 per share.
According to Hill, Coinbase is many things, starting with it being an exchange at its most basic level, storing over 11% of the cryptocurrency in the world.
“The path to success is by no means a foregone conclusion. There are some very sizable risks to manage (growing competition, fee compression, etc.) as well as navigating a volatile crypto backdrop,” Hill wrote in the note.
It's not the trading volumes, a key determinant in the success of an exchange, but it is customer acquisition and asset accumulation that will decide Coinbase’s fate, Hill wrote.
In a vote of confidence for the new kid on the block, Ark Invest, led by the widely-followed Cathie Wood, bought 750,000 shares of Coinbase for $246 million on its first very day of listing.
According to data released by Ark, the firm purchased the shares for three of its actively managed exchange-traded funds.