Sometimes the market moves in the opposite direction of the news, and this week it did exactly that. Coinbase saw its future earnings estimates slashed, its revenue outlook trimmed and its profit projections gutted, and yet the stock still rose. That apparent contradiction is the whole story behind why the crowd on Wall Street is refusing to panic about a share price that has cratered this year.
On Wednesday, both Coinbase (COIN) and Circle (CRCL) gained roughly 3% to 4%. The trigger was a research note from William Blair, a Chicago-based investment bank founded in 1935 and best known among equity investors for its technology and growth coverage. The note took an axe to Coinbase's revenue and earnings forecasts, yet the firm left its "outperform" rating untouched.
The logic is simple once you strip it down: the pain is already baked into the price. "We think investors should stay involved in Coinbase," the firm wrote, signalling that the worst of the damage has, in its view, already been absorbed by the sell-off.
The numbers behind the downgrade
The cuts were not small. William Blair lowered its 2026 revenue estimate for Coinbase by 12% and its 2027 estimate by 13%. It went further on profitability, chopping adjusted EBITDA projections by 34% for both years. Analysts Andrew Jeffrey and Adib Choudhury argued that earnings are on track to hit their lowest point in the second half of 2026 before climbing back in 2027, and they urged shareholders to hold their nerve as spot crypto trading volume bottoms out in step with Bitcoin.
Their volume math tells the same U-shaped story. The firm expects Coinbase's total trading volume to slide about 44% this year, landing at $669 billion, before snapping back by more than 32% in 2027.
Why this is not 2022 all over again
A big part of the confidence rests on the idea that this downturn is built differently from the brutal crypto winter of 2022. Back then, there were no spot Bitcoin ETFs. Today they exist and pull in steady flows. Institutional money has grown into a far larger force, and the regulatory backdrop has matured in ways it simply had not four years ago. In short, the structure underneath the market has changed even if the price action feels familiar.
The firm also pointed to Coinbase's Base layer-2 network as a possible heavyweight earnings driver down the line. Add retail derivatives and prediction markets, and you get a revenue base that stretches well past plain spot trading. Retail derivatives alone were already running at more than $200 million on an annualized basis in the first quarter.
A more cautious voice
Not everyone shares the same near-term optimism. Piper Sandler analyst Patrick Moley trimmed his price target to $155 from $170 and stuck with a "neutral" rating. For him, prediction markets and perpetual futures were the defining thread of the second quarter, with the World Cup fuelling an enormous surge in prediction market activity. Looking into the third quarter, he cautioned about "significant investor attention on the perpetual future threat," a reminder that competition in that fast-growing arena is a real overhang.
The scale of the drop explains the nervousness. Coinbase has tumbled nearly 30% this year, moving alongside Bitcoin's roughly 26% slide. Circle, which arrived with a splashy NYSE debut in June 2025 at $31 per share, has shed about 20% since January.
Bollinger's "W" and a possible turn
The same hopeful read is showing up on the charts. John Bollinger, the veteran technical analyst who created the Bollinger Bands, the volatility envelopes plotted above and below a moving average that traders everywhere use to spot compression and potential breakouts, has been tracking a developing pattern on Bitcoin's daily chart since early July.
On July 2 he shared his analysis on X, spotting a "W" double-bottom forming. A double-bottom is a reversal shape made of two swing lows with a bounce in between, and it turns bullish only once the price pushes through the resistance at the peak between the two troughs. Bollinger called the setup "perfectly fractal," meaning smaller copies of the same shape sit nested inside the larger one, with the pattern visible on the weekly chart too. He was candid about the risk: earlier bullish setups this cycle had been broken by fresh selling.
Here is a chart highlighting a developing 'W' pattern in bitcoin:native. Note that it is perfectly fractal. There are small 'w's at the nadirs and a small 'm' at the apex. For extra credit look at the weekly to see a higher time frame fractal 'W'.
In a later post he raised the stakes, saying that if the "W" completes he would read it as "a confirmation of a change in trend." It was his clearest public hint yet that the trend might be genuinely turning rather than merely pausing.
We are at a critical point. In a bear market bullish setups break and in a bull market bearish setups break. So if this W pattern is successful I would see it as a confirmation of a change in trend.
Bollinger also disclosed earlier this year that he holds a long Bitcoin position through his investment vehicle, so his analysis and his own book point the same way. On a pure technical basis Bitcoin's price still reads as bearish, but that trend is visibly losing steam.
What the on-chain data is saying
Glassnode's latest weekly work adds weight to the turnaround case. Long-term holder capitulation, the dominant source of selling pressure all year, hit its cycle peak two weeks ago and has since rolled over. The measure that captures what long-term holders actually give up each day, adjusted to strip out internal transfers, topped out and is now falling for the first time this cycle.
Buyers, meanwhile, stepped in at the June lows. Glassnode recorded a wide sweep of accumulation across wallets of every size during that stretch. Bitcoin's inverse link to the dollar has strengthened while its correlation with U.S. equities has loosened, and its appetite for good macro news is back: Tuesday's soft inflation print moved Bitcoin more sharply than any major stock index.
Yet the same catch nags at both on-chain analysts and Wall Street. No sustained, spot-driven buying has confirmed the recovery just yet.
Derivative positions are unwinding, long-term sellers are thinning out, and the fear premium priced into options is easing. What is missing is the fresh capital, and it has not fully shown up. That is why William Blair pins the real inflection point on 2027, projecting a 32% rebound in Coinbase trading volume after this year's expected 44% fall.
