While cryptocurrency stocks are coming under fire in the United States, other countries are proving a bit more welcoming. Just ask Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), who landed a license in France and is working to improve its European position. The news was enough for Coinbase investors, who sent shares up over 3.5% in Thursday morning’s trading. Coinbase landed approval from the AMF, the French markets regulation authority, to open up operations in the country.
The move was basically all Coinbase needed to go completely live therein and offer up everything from the purchase and sale of digital assets to the trading of digital assets with other digital assets. The French, previously, have been somewhat of a laggard in this market, but by approving Coinbase, they’ve made significant progress toward catching up with the rest of Europe. In fact, the entire European Union has been working to formalize standards throughout the region, which would make it easier for cryptocurrency operations to run.
Facing Trouble Elsewhere
Yet, even as Coinbase expands in some places, it faces contraction in others. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon—whose opinion on cryptocurrency has been, to say the least, erratic—recently came before Congress to call for a complete ban on cryptocurrency. Dimon, in 2017, declared cryptocurrency to not be “a real thing,” and then declared he’d fire any trader found trading crypto “in a second.” Then, in 2019, he released a cryptocurrency with JPMorgan’s own branding on it, JPM Coin.
Dimon isn’t alone here, either; he’s managed to find support in something of an unlikely position with Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren. Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, noted that, given the sheer number of Americans diversifying their investments with cryptocurrency, the chances of a shutdown were minimal at best.
Is Coinbase a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on COIN stock based on seven Buys, six Holds, and seven Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 384.74% rally in its share price over the past year, the average COIN price target of $98.83 per share implies 40.31% downside risk.
