Coinbase’s 30% Drop: Why Analysts See a 2027 Rebound, Not Ruin
Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) rose 3-4% on Wednesday, even after William Blair cut its 2026 and 2027 EBITDA estimates for Coinbase by 34% and lowered revenue forecasts by 12-13%. Odd move? Yes. But not irrational. My take: traders are treating the downgrade as old news, or at least as news already buried in the stock. Analysts are now circling a 2027 rebound, with the case tied mostly to a Bitcoin recovery and a crypto market that no longer looks exactly like the one that cracked in 2022.
The estimates got worse. The stocks went up. That is the whole tension here. William Blair, the investment bank founded in 1935, published a note arguing that Coinbase’s share price already reflects much of the damage. It kept an “outperform” rating on COIN and told investors to “stay involved in Coinbase.” The firm now expects Coinbase’s total trading volume to fall about 44% this year to $669 billion, then rise more than 32% in 2027. Why does that matter? Because COIN is already down nearly 30% this year, roughly tracking Bitcoin’s 26% slide. Circle, which listed on the NYSE in June 2025 at $31 a share, is down about 20% since January.
Most crypto-rebound arguments lean too hard on vibes. This one at least has moving parts. William Blair is not just telling investors to hang on and hope; it is saying this cycle differs from 2022 in concrete ways. Spot Bitcoin ETFs are live now. Institutional money is less theoretical. Regulation is still messy, sure, but the industry is not staring at the same blank wall it faced four years ago. I’ll be honest: I would not call crypto stable, because obviously not. But it is more wired into traditional finance than it was during the last crash. William Blair also pointed to Coinbase’s Base layer-2 network as a possible earnings source, plus retail derivatives and prediction markets. That part matters. Coinbase cannot live on spot trading forever. Retail derivatives alone passed $200 million annualized in Q1.
John Bollinger, the technical analyst who created Bollinger Bands, added another bullish thread. On July 2, he posted on X that Bitcoin’s daily chart was forming a fractal “W” double-bottom pattern, visible even on the weekly chart. On July 6, he said that if the “W” completes, he would treat it as “a confirmation of a change in trend.” Not a magic spell. Bullish setups fail constantly, and Bollinger has said as much. Still, it is worth noting, especially because he disclosed a long Bitcoin position earlier this year. Counter to the usual advice, that disclosure does not make the signal useless; it just tells you his chart read and his trade are aligned. Bitcoin still looks technically bearish, but the selling pressure no longer looks as clean or forceful.
There is a weaker side too. Piper Sandler analyst Patrick Moley cut his Coinbase price target to $155 from $170 and kept a “neutral” rating. He said prediction markets and perpetual futures were the main story of Q2. The World Cup drove a big jump in prediction market activity, but he also warned about “significant investor attention on the perpetual future threat” going into Q3. In plain English: this business can grow fast. Regulators and competitors are still sitting at the table.
Glassnode’s on-chain data also points toward a possible bottom, though I would be careful with that word. Long-term holder capitulation, the main source of selling pressure this year, peaked two weeks ago and has started to fall. The metric tracks what long-term holders sell each day, excluding internal transfers, and this is the first downturn in the current cycle. Buyers also showed up at the June lows. Glassnode recorded broad accumulation across wallets of different sizes, which says more than a single whale headline. Bitcoin’s inverse relationship with the dollar has strengthened. Its correlation with U.S. equities has weakened. Positive macro news is moving it again. Tuesday’s soft inflation print pushed Bitcoin harder than any major equity index. Yes, this slightly contradicts the bearish chart read above. Bear with me: bottoms often look ugly before they look convincing. The missing piece is still sustained spot buying, and it has not shown up strongly enough to confirm the recovery.
What this means
Put together, this is not a clean bull case. It is a market trying to regain its balance. Coinbase is still under pressure, and Bitcoin is still technically weak. But investors did not punish William Blair’s lower estimates, and that is hard to ignore. The market may already be looking past the 2026 damage and toward a 2027 recovery. Spot Bitcoin ETFs and institutional flows give Coinbase a better backdrop than it had in the last cycle. Base, derivatives, and prediction markets give it more revenue paths. Bollinger’s chart setup and Glassnode’s data support the idea that the bear trend is losing force, even if the big spot-buying wave has not arrived.
The thing to watch now is simple: sustained spot-driven buying. Is this overkill for a stock note? No, because without that flow, this is still mostly a setup. Bitcoin also needs to finish Bollinger’s “W” pattern and clear the resistance near the peak between the two troughs. For Coinbase, William Blair’s key date is 2027, after a projected 44% drop in trading volume this year and a 32% rebound after that. Regulation around prediction markets and perpetual futures matters too. Piper Sandler is right to flag it. Those products could help Coinbase grow. They could also become the next headache.