‘Rapidly Evolving’: Benchmark Analyst Bullish on Coinbase After Stocks, Options Moves

Coinbase held an event Tuesday to showcase an array of incoming product additions, including tokenized equities trading and the offering of options trading for both crypto and stocks alike, and one prominent analyst sees significant upside in the crypto exchange as it broadens its horizons even further beyond crypto trading.

On Wednesday, Benchmark-StoneX Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst Mark Palmer said the firm is reiterating its COIN price target of $270—a nearly 60% increase over Tuesday’s closing price above $169.

“The ambition on display was sweeping enough to put every brokerage, bank, and fintech in the country on notice,” Palmer wrote. “The company unveiled a suite of products spanning stocks, derivatives, artificial intelligence, and consumer finance, extending the strategy it first announced last December and pushing the platform well beyond crypto into every asset class it can reach.”

Coinbase used its Tuesday event to unveil several new products as it pushes to become an “everything exchange.” The biggest reveal was upcoming tokenized U.S. equities, which Coinbase says will represent real 1:1-backed shares with automatic dividend payouts, unlike rival tokenized stock products it characterizes as derivatives.

The company also plans to launch options trading for both crypto and traditional equities, and will let users transfer existing stock portfolios onto its platform. Additional updates include the ability to borrow against staked Solana, a Coinbase One Card travel portal offering 5% Bitcoin rewards, USDC-backed card access, and new short-term crypto price-prediction contracts.

“In our view, the company’s update yesterday provided the clearest evidence yet that it is rapidly evolving from a cyclical crypto brokerage into a foundational infrastructure platform linking the emerging on-chain economy to the traditional one,” Palmer added.

COIN is roughly flat on the day, recently trading just above $169 per Yahoo Finance. Shares are down 13% in the last month and 25% since the start of the year as crypto markets decline.

In May, Coinbase announced that it would cut 14% of its staff and rely more on AI to boost efficiency with a smaller team. The firm also reported a second consecutive quarterly loss of $394 million for Q1 2026.