What happened
The crypto winter wasn't particularly frosty on Thursday afternoon, with the prices of top coins and tokens rising at least marginally. You wouldn't know that from the performance of one of the top cryptocurrency exchange operators, however. Coinbase Global (COIN -5.10%) was down by more than 12% in late afternoon trading, as investors digested the adjustments several analysts made on their evaluations of the stock.
So what
Those revised prognosticator takes come on the heels of Coinbase's second-quarter earnings release, which dropped after market hours on Monday. Throughout the following day, several pundits weighed in with adjustments, and for the most part these were relatively bearish.
One of the more negative reworkings came from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods' Kyle Voigt, who cut his recommendation from market perform (read: neutral) to underperform (sell). Joining him in downgrading was CFRA, which degraded its recommendation from buy to hold.
For the most part, though, analysts cut their price targets but maintained their recommendations. One example of this is JMP Securities' Devin Ryan, who shaved $10 from his Coinbase price target to $195 per share. He feels that the long-term prospects for the company remain solid, although the current bearish sentiment on cryptocurrencies and related stocks is "incredibly challenging at the moment."
Now what
Almost needless to say, Coinbase is nearly 100% dependent on action in crypto trading. The crypto winter might not necessarily end up in a deep freeze for all coins and tokens. Since investors remain very wary of such assets and fearful of getting burned, however, the market isn't exactly lively just now. And that certainly isn't working to the benefit of Coinbase.
