Goldman Sachs Sets $196 Target After Coinbase’s 28% Five-Day Rally

Author: Boaz Sobrado, Forbes

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Goldman Sachs raised its Coinbase price target from $173 to $196. By the time the news landed, the stock had already rallied for five straight days, gaining 28% cumulatively.

For trading desks, this isn't a report that "suddenly discovered improving fundamentals"—it's more like retroactively acknowledging a rally that has already happened. Coinbase closed Tuesday at $187.16, up 4.3%. By midday Wednesday, the stock pulled back to $182.43, leaving about 7.4% upside to Goldman's $196 target. Under the same logic, Goldman analyst James Yaro maintained a Buy rating on Robinhood with a $124 target; Robinhood was trading at $109.92, 12.8% below that target.

The upgrade didn't come quietly. Bitcoin touched $80,698 intraday Tuesday, reclaiming the $80,000 level for the first time since mid-May. By Wednesday it pulled back to around $77,900, still up 19.9% for the week. Crypto stocks followed bitcoin higher, and Goldman nudged its target up another notch. The market immediately split into two camps: one thinks Wall Street is starting to seriously price crypto equities, the other thinks analysts are just moving numbers to chase the chart.

Targets Chasing Prices Is an Old Problem

"Most of the problem is that analysts just change targets to follow the stock price," said Charan Dangeti, a financial content creator. His observation is blunt: when stocks fall, targets get cut; when stocks rise, targets get raised. He cited Citi's downgrade of Micron as an example—the stock fell 10%, the target came down with it; when the trend turned, they added it back.

"That's the problem with these price targets. I think there's bias in there, and I don't think it's the most honest approach," Dangeti said. He is a paid creator partner for GameStock, a simulated trading app.

He wasn't just talking about Coinbase. He mentioned another number he doesn't believe: "UBS's James also said SpaceX is worth $800." The point is clear—targets on the wall can look pretty, but that doesn't mean institutions will actually buy at that number with real money.

Coinbase's current position leaves room for that skepticism. The stock is about 54% below its 52-week high of $402.16. In other words, Goldman raising its target to $196 sounds bullish, but that number is still a long way from the previous peak. The Street isn't monolithic either: Bernstein has the highest target at $330; Mizuho cut its target from $200 to $155 back in early August, and $155 is now below the market price. BTIG lowered its target due to weak trading volumes, and Benchmark cut after second-quarter results missed expectations—when market-wide crypto spot volumes fell 25% quarter-over-quarter.

On one side, Goldman is revising upward; on the other, some just cut. Coinbase is caught between two narratives: short-term price has already moved, long-term volume hasn't come back.

Goldman Isn't Just Buying Spot Volume

Yaro's Buy rating isn't just a bet that bitcoin keeps rising. Goldman's language is closer to "cautiously optimistic": structural growth in brokerage and prediction markets remains, crypto trading has upside elasticity, regulation is moving forward, and the company is still controlling costs.

This aligns with Coinbase's own business mix. When spot trading stalls, the old model of taking commissions on bitcoin buys and sells looks ugly; but derivatives, prediction markets, tokenized stocks, and perpetual contracts can keep generating fees even when spot is quiet. Robinhood is put in the same basket for similar reasons: new business lines, especially derivatives and prediction markets, are starting to be written as a growth story rather than just a retail crypto on-ramp.

Andy Duenas, director at Cap V Financial Services, put it more fully. "The second narrative around crypto is taking it seriously," he said on the podcast "On The Margin." "This is going to be the future of finance. This is going to be embedded in large financial institutions."

He said this while Goldman, the bank raising the target, is itself building out crypto operations. That adds another layer to the report: it's not an outsider watching from the sidelines, but a major bank that's both making markets and pricing its peers.

Duenas also mentioned a scenario closer to retail. "We have a client that partnered with Coinbase to launch one of the first crypto-collateralized mortgages. Because you see more and more young people with their assets locked up in crypto. So how do they use those assets to buy their first home?"

That line points to the next chapter Goldman's narrative wants to tell: crypto is no longer just chips on an exchange, but an asset that can be collateralized, put on balance sheets, and enter mainstream credit. Duenas himself pulled the focus back: "When it comes to money, the core is building trust. So our most important job is to make the market believe crypto is a usable product."

Trust is exactly what's most strained right now. Prices rose, targets rose, but the signal of U.S. institutional buying hasn't turned green along with them.

Premium Flips Positive Then Negative—Institutional Money Still Unclear

The Coinbase bitcoin premium is an old indicator the market uses to gauge U.S. demand. A positive premium usually means U.S. investors are willing to pay more than offshore markets; a negative one is often read as U.S. buying absent, with the rally driven by overseas capital.

Niels, co-founder of STABL Agency, wrote on X early Tuesday: "Coinbase's bitcoin premium briefly flipped green but didn't hold, and has already returned to negative territory, indicating U.S. institutional buying remains weak. Bitcoin is moving, but big money doesn't seem fully convinced yet." At that moment, bitcoin had just touched $80,698.

Six hours later, the same indicator was read the other way. Trader Crypto Jargon posted: "Coinbase bitcoin premium just turned positive, after being negative for more than three consecutive months. Months of negative premium meant U.S. demand was dead, and rallies were driven by overseas capital—fragile. Once it turns positive, real buying is back."

Same day, same indicator, two readings coexisting. That itself shows institutional sentiment is still wavering, with no one-sided "U.S. buying is back" consensus.

On-chain data didn't help Coinbase either. CryptoQuant contributor CW wrote on Aug. 20: "Coinbase is showing net selling of bitcoin. But Binance and OKX are still net buyers." Translated into trading desk language: offshore exchanges are still accumulating, while the largest U.S. compliant exchange is more on the distribution side.

Meanwhile, Coinbase's role in the bitcoin spot ETF flow pipeline is under scrutiny again. ETF creation/redemption, custody, and settlement often go through a handful of compliant gateways. Prices can rise first, but concentration risk in the pipeline doesn't disappear because of that.

Michael Tanguma, co-founder and CEO of bitcoin custody firm Onramp, was blunt: "Why trust one custodian instead of three? It's straightforward. We're too early, so nobody does it now. Whether it's Coinbase or yourself, there's a single point of failure."

Goldman can write Coinbase as "the gateway to the future of finance," and the market can write the same company as "a single point in the ETF pipeline." Both statements are true right now.

Late-Bear Debate: Newbie Capitulation or Paper Hands Selling the Bottom

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju described the current position more coldly: "Newbie capitulation is the last step of every bear market."

He also observed a twisted set of data: Coinbase's market share is rising, yet the premium has been negative for a long time. "Paper hands in ETFs and institutions sold the bottom." Meaning, it's not that there's no trading in the U.S. channel—it's that those who should have held didn't, and those who should be buying are still on the sidelines.

This matches the second quarter. Market-wide crypto spot volumes fell 25% quarter-over-quarter, Coinbase missed expectations, and Benchmark cut its target right after. BTIG's reason for cutting was more direct: volumes are bad. When Mizuho lowered its target to $155, the market was still searching for a bottom; now the stock is back above that number, but weak volumes haven't been automatically fixed by this rebound.

External research adds more specific context to Goldman's logic: crypto trading volume fell 30% in July and another 21% in August, contracting for ten consecutive months—longer than the median of the previous five cycles; volumes are about 75% below this cycle's peak. Meanwhile, total crypto market cap rebounded about 21% over the past week. Goldman's bet is essentially: prices and market cap stabilize first, then a volume inflection may appear; until then, valuation is supported by brokerage, prediction markets, cost cuts, and regulatory progress.

That explains why Goldman is willing to upgrade Coinbase while volumes still look ugly. It's not looking at "spot commissions will explode tomorrow," but at "the company no longer lives on spot commissions alone." Prediction markets, derivatives, and tokenized products are being written as revenue streams independent of bitcoin sentiment.

But traders watching the screen still look at two things first: whether bitcoin can hold near $80,000, and whether the Coinbase premium truly turns positive and stays there. Neither has given a clean answer yet.

Problems $196 Can't Solve

Lay out the numbers and the divergence is clear.

• Goldman Sachs: $196, Buy.
• Bernstein: $330, highest target.
• Mizuho: $155, already below the current price.
• BTIG, Benchmark: cutting due to volumes and results.
• The market itself: Coinbase still about 54% below its year-to-date high of $402.16.

So $196 doesn't look like an endpoint—more like a mid-price pushed along by the market. The stock rallied 28% in five days, and the report added $23 to the target. It looks like resonance, but it's also easily read as lagging confirmation. Dangeti's criticism stings because it hits the most common inertia in sell-side research: price moves first, target gets adjusted after; then the adjusted target is used to prove "Wall Street is bullish."

What hasn't been proven is whether U.S. big money has come back. The premium flipped green then red, Coinbase shows net selling, offshore shows net buying, and paper hands in the ETF pipeline are accused of selling the bottom—these signals together show this rally is still fragile. Bitcoin can reach $80,000 first, Coinbase can get above $180 first, and Goldman can write $196 first. But if U.S. institutional buying doesn't step in, these numbers are still just prices on the wall.

Duenas painted the long-term direction fully: crypto will enter major institutions, become collateralizable and creditworthy assets, and the key is trust. Tanguma described the current structure bluntly: too early, too concentrated, one custodian is a single point. Ki Young Ju described the cycle position coldly: newbie capitulation is often the last scene of a bear market.

These three statements don't cancel each other out. They just show that Goldman's $196 is more of a statement that "crypto equities can continue to be seriously priced" than a confirmation that "institutions have re-entered." That's exactly what traders need to guard against: targets can be changed in a day, but buying can't.

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