Coinbase’s stock price has fallen 30% year-to-date, and Wall Street believes it is nearing the bottom

Earnings expectations were cut, but the stock price rose instead. Yesterday, the shares of Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) both increased by about 3–4%. Previously, the Chicago-based investment bank William Blair released a report that lowered its revenue and earnings expectations for Coinbase, but kept its rating of “outperform the broader market.”

William Blair’s core view is that the current bad news has already been fully priced into the stock, and investors should continue to hold Coinbase.

The firm lowered its 2026 revenue expectation for Coinbase by 12% and its 2027 revenue expectation by 13%; after adjustments over the two years, its projected EBITDA was both sharply reduced by 34%. Analysts Andrew Jeffrey and Adib Choudhury said the company’s earnings will bottom in the second half of 2026, then recover and rise again in 2027. They suggested that investors continue to hold Coinbase as spot crypto trading volume bottoms in sync with Bitcoin.

William Blair predicts that Coinbase’s full-year total trading volume will fall by about 44%, to $669B; in 2027, trading volume will rebound by more than 32%.

The firm believes there are structural differences between this cycle and 2022. Today, spot Bitcoin ETFs are already in place, institutional capital has continued to flow in, and the industry regulatory framework is moving toward completion—these are all bullish conditions that did not exist four years ago.

The report is also positive on Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 network Base, saying it could become a core growth driver for profits. It also notes that derivatives and prediction markets will further broaden revenue sources, so the business will no longer rely purely on spot trading. Even just its retail derivatives business, annualized revenue already exceeded $200 million in the first quarter.

Not all institutions are optimistic about COIN’s near-term performance. iPer Sandler analyst Patrick Moley cut his COIN target price from $170 to $155 and maintained a neutral rating. He said the key focus in Q2 is prediction markets and perpetual contracts: the World Cup events boosted the prediction market’s scale dramatically, and he reminded that in Q3 the market will be highly watchful for potential competitive pressure caused by perpetual contracts.

So far this year, COIN’s share price is down nearly 30%, while Bitcoin is down about 26% over the same period. Circle listed on the NYSE in June 2025 at an offering price of $31; since the start of the year, the stock has fallen by 20%.

“The W” bottom pattern taking shape: John Bollinger predicts Bitcoin is about to surge significantly

Technicals also show optimistic signals. John Bollinger, the inventor of the Bollinger Bands volatility indicator and a veteran technical analyst, has been repeatedly pointing since early July that Bitcoin’s daily chart is building a key bottom formation.

On July 2, Bollinger posted on the social platform X, noting that the market formed a “W” double-bottom reversal structure: two lows create a consolidation range, with a rebound in between. Once the price breaks above the resistance level in the middle of the double bottom, the long trend will be officially confirmed.

He said the current move is a standard fractal structure: a larger pattern embeds smaller W bottoms, and the same structure can also be seen at the weekly level. However, he also pointed out uncertainty objectively: in this bear market, bullish patterns appeared multiple times, but were ultimately broken by selling pressure.

In the latest update, Bollinger said that if this W bottom is completed, it would be taken as a clear signal of a trend reversal—this is also his most explicit bullish signal so far, meaning the outlook is no longer just a short-term rebound.

Earlier this year, Bollinger disclosed that his investment entity holds long Bitcoin positions, and his view matches his holdings. From the perspective of the big technical trend, Bitcoin’s overall bearish positioning has not yet been fully reversed, but the downward momentum has been steadily fading.

Has Bitcoin’s bottom already appeared?

On-chain data provider Glassnode’s latest weekly research report shows that the main sources of selling pressure in the market for the year—panic selling by long-term holders—peaked and then reversed downward two weeks ago. After excluding on-chain transfer noise, the metric counts the actual amount long-term holders sell; for the first time in this cycle, it shows a turning point downward.

The price’s June low attracted a large wave of buy orders. Glassnode observed that wallets of different sizes collectively stepped in to scoop up coins. The negative correlation between Bitcoin and the U.S. dollar index has deepened further, and the ongoing weakening of its linkage with U.S. stocks continues. Macroeconomic bullish news is again returning to being less sensitive to the coin price: on Tuesday, inflation data came in below expectations, and Bitcoin’s rise far outpaced major U.S. stock indices.

For on-chain analysts and Wall Street institutions, a key question is: the spot Bitcoin market has not yet shown sustained buying, which is not enough to confirm a reversal.

Derivatives positioning has been steadily closed out and exited, long-term selling pressure has been gradually weakening, and fear premiums in the options market have narrowed—but incremental capital has not entered at a large scale. William Blair judged that the turning point will be in 2027; after predicting Coinbase’s trading volume will drop 44% this year, it expects a 32% rebound the next year.