Cryptocurrency has been a wild ride for the last, oh, several years or so, and there are signs that it will not get much tamer for the foreseeable future. Cryptocurrency stock Coinbase (COIN) is making a major advance by cutting out fees when users purchase PayPal’s (PYPL) stablecoin. The move was enough for investors to hear, as shares shot up over 4% in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
Coinbase has an interest in PayPal’s stablecoin, looking to improve the value of PayPal USD by making it more readily accessible. PayPal USD is pegged to the Untied States dollar, but despite this pretty solid basis, the stablecoin itself has been lagging the market since 2023, when it launched, reports noted. PayPal USD actually represents less than 1% of the dollar-tied stablecoin market, and has a market cap of just $730 million.
But Coinbase and PayPal are eager to make something of PayPal USD. Thus, Coinbase is pulling any fees connected to the coin, and both will be working on “stablecoin based solutions” which should address the demand component as well. This includes commercial solutions as well as on-chain platforms and decentralized finance operations.
Pushing Into Charlotte
Coinbase is not just putting its eggs into the PayPal basket as far as expansion goes, either. Recent reports noted that Coinbase is looking to Charlotte, North Carolina for a new move, planning to hire over 130 employees, reports noted. This is part of a larger push recently announced by Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, to take advantage of the improving environment for cryptocurrency as a result of the Trump Administration.
Interestingly, despite the fact that 95% of Coinbase’s roughly 4,000-strong workforce works remotely, Coinbase plans to set up an office in Charlotte. Coinbase does keep “hub offices” in San Francisco and New York, though what is so specifically vital about Charlotte that it requires a hub itself is unclear. However, reports suggest that Charlotte is increasingly proving to be an attractive figure for tech stocks, as Charlotte has a growing, and often poorly-publicized, talent base therein.
Is Coinbase a Buy, Sell or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on COIN stock based on 13 Buys and nine Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After an 9.23% loss in its share price over the past year, the average COIN price target of $288.33 per share implies 41.43% upside potential.
