Another day, and another drop in the Coinbase share price. The crypto exchange loses 7% as investors choose Altcoins over Bitcoin.
The Coinbase share price has proven more volatile than its biggest product since its April 14th listing. On opening day alone the stock had a 27% range. At its highest point on debut day, the stock reached $428 per share and achieving a market cap of $100 Billion+.
This was to mark a high point in the Coinbase share price. The stock has since lost -40.35% from its first day high and -35% from its opening price. Leaving investors who bought at the opening bell needing a 50% rally from its current $256 level to get back to break-even.
I see two main reasons why the stock has performed so badly. The first is that it was too high to start with. This seems simple enough. Maybe the stock hasn’t dropped -50% from its fair value. It’s possible that it was overvalued to start with.
Many market participants are unable to access the Bitcoin price directly. Institutions and pension investors have long sought a listed vehicle that would offer them exposure to the cryptocurrency. Coinbase is seen by many as a Bitcoin proxy. Trading in the crypto markets leading coin is the biggest contributor the Coinbase’s revenues. Higher Bitcoin equals more investor interest, which is likely to result in higher revenues for the exchange.
This cash on the sidelines may well have contributed to the Coinbase share price rising too high, too soon. After all, investor ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) has long been a factor in pushing digital currencies to parabolic levels in the past.
In a report earlier in the week, I discussed how Bitcoin has been losing market share to its smaller rivals. If the Coinbase share price relies on Bitcoin trading, the shift into Altcoins may be playing a part in the stock’s decline. For instance, the dogecoin (DOGE) performance has been one of the hottest topics in crypto land recently, with investors flocking to take advantage of the meme coins’ meteoric rise. The Coinbase platform does not currently support DogeCoin. This has seen the exchanges’ rivals reap the benefits.
In fact, in terms of coverage, the Coinbase offering is inferior to Binance and Huobi, who provide liquidity on 358 coins and 325 coins, respectively. Traders on Coinbase can access just 63 coins.
There is not much to see for the technical analysts who rely on historical data to predict future performance. Having traded publicly for under a month, it’s hard to use the available data to form a strong opinion.
We can, however, see that the Coinbase share price has formed a descending triangle pattern in a concise time frame. The descending line at the top end providing resistance, and the lower end of the channel offering support.
A break above the horizontal support at $263 may see the price extend to the top end of the descending channel at $275, which is also the May 4th low. Should the market clear this area, it would suggest a break of the wedge and potentially higher prices.
However, in my view, I don’t see a clear-cut trading opportunity that offers good risk vs. reward just yet, but there may be one around the corner.
After the close on May the 13th, the exchange will release its first-quarter earnings for 2021. This will give investors a much better insight as to where the Coinbase share price goes next.
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