The investment firm believes the sell-side is missing the extent to which retail has come back into the crypto space. In addition, they feel it is overstating institutional participation on the back of recent bitcoin ETFs.
“While retail activity has cooled in the last several days, we expect Q1’24 to show strong participation from retail accounts, which benefits both HOOD (NASDAQ:HOOD) and COIN,” said Needham & Company.
“We are raising our Q1’24 estimates on COIN and HOOD,” they added. “On COIN, we are also increasing our projected retail mix share vs institutional. HOOD’s Q1 is also benefiting from a record month (Feb) for equity options volumes.”
Analysts at Needham cited outsized website traffic loads at Coinbase, volume share of underlying crypto assets this quarter, and app download rankings for HOOD, COIN, as indications that retail came back meaningfully in late February and early March before giving back some gains and falling in the rankings.
Source: Cryptocurrency - investing.com
