If you’re down bad enough to be lurking around Reddit or scrolling through crypto Twitter lately, you’ve probably run into a genius claiming, “I’m going all in on crypto… Trump can’t tariff the blockchain!” Cool. And I can’t put a parking ticket on your imaginary Lambo either, but here we are.

In theory, yeah… tariffs don’t apply to decentralized networks. In practice, The crypto market still lives and dies by economic headlines, investor panic, and whether or not Bitcoin is getting sold off or not .

Case in point… Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto exchange just posted its worst quarter since Sam Bankman-Fried gave us the most entertaining perp walk since Bernie Madoff pitched “guaranteed returns” to Palm Beach retirees. Yeah. That bad. 

COIN is down 39% year-to-date, and has dropped 26% in just the last month alone (clearly crypto hasn’t had the start everyone was hoping for in a Trump presidency). Back in election season (late 2024), Coinbase was on a heater. Trump was talking crypto. Biden looked vaguely confused about what “digital assets” even meant. The market assumed a red wave meant green candles.

Instead, what they got was tariffs… talk of 60% across-the-board import tariffs. Michael Colonnese, an analyst at H.C. Wainwright, explained it simply: “Tariff headlines have been a big, big headwind with non-equity markets and digital asset prices.” In other words: even if you can’t tariff Bitcoin, you can definitely freak everyone out enough to dump it… and dump Coinbase stock along with it.

The strange part is that Coinbase’s business fundamentals aren’t falling apart. In fact, they’ve never looked better. Revenue in 2024 hit $6.3 billion, more than double the year prior. About $4B of that came from transaction fees, with the rest coming from subscriptions and staking services. Even more surprising, they’ve also got $4 billion in cash, which is crypto royalty status in an industry where half the players are one margin call away from vanishing.

On top of that, the stock trades at 24x earnings and 11.7x EV/EBITDA, cheaper than legacy exchanges like the Nasdaq. So why is Wall Street treating it like it’s radioactive? Because no matter how well Coinbase executes, the company is still handcuffed to crypto prices. Bitcoin is down 11% this year. Trading volume is soft. And every time Jerome Powell clears his throat, digital assets wet the bed.

So, with revenue doubling, $4B in cash, and trading cheaper than most traditional exchanges… this has to be a dip-buy no-brainer, right? Well, not everyone’s sold on that narrative.

Plenty of analysts still believe Coinbase has room to rebound. H.C. Wainwright raised its price target to $350, implying a potential upside of around 123% from current levels. JMP Securities went even more bullish, projecting $475… a 202%+ gain if they’re right, all in on the narrative that Coinbase could lead the next major chapter of crypto adoption. And Rosenblatt sees opportunity too, tagging COIN with a $305 target, which would mark a 94% increase from where the stock currently trades.

But not everyone’s feeling as sunshine and rainbows. JPMorgan recently upgraded Coinbase to Neutral, but paired it with a cautious $80 price target… which would be a potential 49% decline from the current price of $157. It’s clear they’re concerned the ongoing crypto volatility and broader macroeconomic uncertainty (tariffs) could continue to weigh on the stock in the months ahead.

The way I see it: when a company doubles revenue, holds $4 billion in cash, and trades cheaper than the Nasdaq while still getting punished like it committed securities fraud... I tend to view that as a buying opportunity. You don’t get prices like these when everything feels safe. You get them when people are panicking over headlines.

Stock.News does not have positions in companies mentioned.