JPMorgan Chase has upgraded COIN to Overweight, with a significantly increased target price of $404.

BlockBeats News, October 24th, according to CNBC reports, JPMorgan's attitude towards Coinbase is shifting from wait-and-see to active engagement. The bank has upgraded its stock rating for the cryptocurrency exchange platform from Neutral to Overweight and significantly raised its target price from $342 to $404. Despite Coinbase's stock price already having risen by 30% this year, JPMorgan believes its valuation is still attractive compared to its competitors. Based on an adjusted forecasting model, the bank expects a further 25% upside in the stock price.

Analyst Kenneth Worthington pointed out that Coinbase is exploring the feasibility of launching the Base token, which will be a significant catalyst. He believes this move will accelerate the ecosystem development of the Base blockchain (to be launched in August 2023). In his report, he wrote: "The token's market cap could ultimately expand to the range of $12 billion to $34 billion. We believe the token issuance will achieve a win-win situation for shareholders and cryptocurrency participants—driving ecosystem development, enhancing community engagement, and promoting infrastructure construction."

Another major growth driver comes from Coinbase's deepening research on the payment applications of the USDC stablecoin to promote its monthly subscription service, Coinbase One. Worthington's analysis states: "We observe Coinbase is using USDC yield experiments to drive the growth of Coinbase One and enhance the monetization capability of USDC on the platform. This move is expected to attract more customers to use the Coinbase One service, which offers subscription-based trading fees and USDC enhanced yield benefits."

At the same time, Worthington believes that the erosion of Coinbase's spot trading market share by decentralized exchanges has largely stabilized. He added that Coinbase's launch of decentralized trading services on the Base chain also helps mitigate this competitive threat.

JPMorgan stated that by applying a 50x P/E ratio valuation to its competitors Circle and Bullish, and adding the value of the Base token, they derived a target price of $404 corresponding to Coinbase's 2027 earnings expectations.