Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs said it is “selectively constructive” on brokers and cryptocurrency firms heading into 2026, arguing that a resilient retail trading environment and continued regulatory progress should underpin growth.
“We expect the gathering between traditional retail brokerage and cryptocurrency trading to continue in 2026, driving increased competition, which could impact market share and product pricing,” analysts led by James Yaro wrote in Monday’s report.
The bank upgraded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) to buy from neutral and raised its price target to $303 from $294, implying an upside of more than 30%. Shares rose 4.3% in early trading Monday along with a Sunday night rally in cryptocurrency prices.
The bank downgraded eToro (ETOR) to neutral from buy and cut its price target to $39 from $48. The stock was down 1.2% to $35.27 in premarket trading.
Yaro and his team continued with buy ratings on Robinhood (HOOD), Interactive Brokers (IBKR), and Figure Technology (FIGR).
Coinbase’s scale and the strength of its brand are seen as key drivers of its peer-beating revenue growth and market share gains, Yaro said. It forecast a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in COIN’s revenue through 2027, compared to 8% for peers, backed by best-in-class customer acquisition costs.
Yaro and his team also highlighted recent product launches in brokerage, banking, wealth and tokenization, saying they improve the company’s competitiveness and position it to scale structural growth areas such as prediction markets.
At the same time, the bank is constructive about Coinbase’s growing services and subscriptions business, which now accounts for about 40% of revenue, and expects it to grow steadily and reduce earnings volatility as cryptocurrency use cases expand beyond trading.
“While it continues to deliver healthy growth, competition is intensifying in its core market and products, potentially driving higher customer acquisition costs and prices and impacting planned US expansion,” the analysts said of eToro in their downgrade.
Read more: Citi continues to believe in cryptocurrency stocks even though Bitcoin was shaken at the end of the year.
