By Christiana Sciaudone
Investing.com -- Coinbase rose 0.6% as Canaccord initiated it with a buy and calling it the "on-ramp" to cryptocurrency.
Analyst Joseph Vafi set a price target of $285. Shares are trading a hair under $234 today.
"While the short term is less clear, the long-term investment considerations relative to COIN are attractive – as we believe in the future of cryptocurrencies, emergence of blockchain clouds/decentralized finance and entire ecosystems that likely emerge around these new markets," Vafi wrote in a note, according to StreetInsider. "We are also positive about COIN’s ability to grow its user base at impressive rates and what this means for monetization beyond crypto."
Coinbase, a fintech focused on cryptocurrency, went public in April. Shares have since dropped almost 30%.
“We view COIN as a kind of ‘super on-ramp’ to everything crypto, and that holds true for consumers, institutions and enterprises," Vafi said, according to CNBC. "Today that on-ramp is mostly comprised of trading revenue, but the future here could unfold rather fast and include support of new protocols, exploiting the nascent hyper growth in DeFi (decentralized finance), and even owning cloud-centric blockchain solutions. But that is the future.”