According to BlockBeats, on May 10, Coinbase chose to reveal its acquisition of Deribit to the market before releasing its earnings report on Thursday, with Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer pointing out that as more institutions adopt cryptocurrencies, acquiring Deribit will allow Coinbase to 'immediately take a dominant position in the fast-growing derivatives space.'
Oppenheimer analyst Owen Lau believes that this move will make Coinbase a 'strong challenger' to Binance, Bybit, and OKX in the derivatives space, and emphasizes that 'cryptocurrency options have relatively weak seasonality, with stable demand regardless of market fluctuations.'
However, Compass Point analysts Ed Engel and Joe Flynn noted that Deribit primarily serves institutional clients, which does not help increase Coinbase's retail-focused perpetual contract trading volume. The two analysts downgraded Coinbase to sell last week and reiterated that the retail trading market in the U.S. has become saturated. Architect Partners' Michael Klena believes that this acquisition will not fundamentally change his evaluation of Coinbase (target price $170), as it is merely an extension of existing business and does not mitigate the impact of cryptocurrency market volatility on quarterly performance.