Crypto went crazy over Coinbase’s blockchain plans. But Wall Street shrugged.
Cryptocurrency broker Coinbase Global announced the launch of its own blockchain network, a move that was met with near-unanimous cheers from the crypto community. Wall Street, for its part, mostly shrugged it off because there just aren’t many immediate revenue implications.
Coinbase (ticker: COIN) late last month announced the launch of Base, a layer-2 blockchain that operates on top of Ethereum, the popular smart contract network underpinned by
Ether,
the second largest crypto after
Bitcoin.
Base would be a “secure, affordable, developer-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build decentralized apps,” Coinbase said, adding that it aimed to integrate more than 1 billion users into the crypto-economy.
Base will be a home for the company’s own blockchain-based products as well as an open ecosystem, and Coinbase plans to make it more decentralized over time. But the group has no plans to issue a new network token, its own crypto that would have the potential to be a way for the company to raise new capital.
“Its main selling point is its proximity to Coinbase,” said Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics at FRNT Financial, a capital markets and advisory group.
“While the exchange plans to “decentralize the chain gradually over time,” in practice Base will be highly dependent on support from Coinbase, Savic said. “It’s a similar dynamic we’ve seen with Binance’s BNB chain, which despite being launched in 2020, is heavily dependent on support from the stock exchange.”
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Despite the launch of Base in the spotlight in crypto media and among Twitter’s active digital asset community, analysts have largely remained mum on the matter. That’s likely because there aren’t many revenue implications at Coinbase, which still relies heavily on fees from crypto trading to drive revenue, even as the company has pushed into areas such as interest-bearing products.
“Coinbase benefits as the crypto ecosystem grows, and thus we do not see immediate fees or new direct monetization,” Kenneth B. Worthington, an analyst at JP Morgan, said in a note Friday. “Rather, the launch of L-2 will enable more business to be brought on-chain … we expect Coinbase to leverage Base for its own development, including its wallet and NFT platforms.”
At least one analyst was more optimistic.
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“The Base launch is a first-time positioning that has so far been highly regarded by the crypto-native community. This also gives us comfort that management is returning to its roots and offering product differentiation from non-crypto-native peers, such as Robinhood,” wrote John Todaro , analyst at Needham, in a note.
Todaro added that it could actually have an impact on revenue.
Since in the short term Coinbase runs Base itself, it can earn the company’s rewards in Ether for processing transactions on the blockchain, which could amount to $60 million in total revenue in the medium term annually in Todaro’s “very rough base.” But revenues could be multiples of that if decentralized app usage increases significantly, the analyst said.
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That’s not bad — and it’s just the kind of diversification that analysts have been calling for from Coinbase. But the stock market still doesn’t seem to be reacting much.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
