People watch as the logo for Coinbase, the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, is displayed on the Nasdaq MarketSite jumbotron at Times Square in New York on April 14, 2021.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Coinbase is the top performer in the S&P 500 in June, boosted by positive regulatory updates, product launches and, of course, its very inclusion in the benchmark stock index at the end of May.
The crypto exchange’s outperformance in the S&P 500 extends back to the April 8 market low, just after President Donald Trump’s initial sweeping tariffs announcement sent stocks sinking.
Coinbase is now on pace for its best month since November, third straight monthly gain — 43% in June alone — and its first three-month rally since the end of 2023. On Thursday, the stock hit its highest level since the day of its initial public offering in 2021.
“The two things holding Coinbase back were the issues of fee compression — it hasn’t happened and in fact, Coinbase has been generating positive earnings consistently, which is why they were included in the S&P 500 — and regulatory uncertainty,” he said. “Many people don’t believe there will be any consensus coming out of Congress … the fact is we’re seeing the passage of the GENIUS Act.”
Even with Coinbase’s 44% run this month, the stock has room to appreciate further, according to Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens. He said the market isn’t fully connecting the dots around Coinbase’s close relationship with Circle Internet Group. Circle debuted on the New York Stock Exchange June 5 and has soared more than 500% since.
According to a revenue share agreement, Coinbase keeps 100% of the revenue generated on all USDC held on Coinbase, plus nearly 50% of all other USDC revenues, “which is 99% of Circle’s current revenue,” Ryan said.
USDC is the stablecoin issued by Circle. Stablecoins are a subset of cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of real-world assets. About 99% of all stablecoins are tethered to the price of the U.S. dollar.
Another way to play
“Yet, Coinbase doesn’t incur any of the operating costs borne by Circle,” Ryan said. “If the market is right on the current bullish view for Circle, Coinbase is another way to play that — and with the financial connection described, it would seem there’s a lot more value left in Coinbase.”
Coinbase, whose core business is crypto trading, has been expanding its suite of crypto services over the past several quarters to include areas like custody, staking, wallet services and stablecoins.
This month, the company beefed up its subscription plan by offering it with its first crypto-backed credit card in partnership with American Express. It also introduced a partnership with Shopify and debuted a stablecoin payments service for e-commerce. JPMorgan also partnered with the crypto company to launch its own version of a stablecoin, which it’s calling a “deposit token” on Coinbase’s in-house built blockchain, Base.
“There’s clearly a sentiment trade occurring in crypto as institutional investors are looking at the space, many for the first time, and want to express a positive view on crypto evolving from a speculative asset class to one of utility — with legislative clarity as the key catalyst — and Coinbase is the most direct way to invest in that thesis,” Ryan said.
Volume concern
If there’s one concern, it’s in trading volume, said Oppenheimer’s Lau. The average daily volume of crypto transactions on the Coinbase platform has been trending lower since April, which could be a risk for the company and other crypto trading providers heading into the second half of the year.
The analyst is optimistic the regulatory outlook can turn that around though, specifically if the industry gets market structure legislation on top of stablecoin legislation.
“If the GENIUS Act brought us to ‘stablecoin summer’ then I believe that the eventual passage of the CLARITY Act can bring us into altcoin summer,” Lau said. “So at the end of this year, I do see another catalyst that can reverse this trend because there will be animal spirits, people will be buying altcoins like crazy if we get past the market structure bill.”
Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said on Monday that although gaming consoles are not going away, the industry is moving toward PCs in the next decade.
“I think it’s moving towards PC and business is moving towards open rather than closed,” Zelnick told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “But if you define console as the property, not the system, then the notion of a very rich game that you engage in for many hours that you play on a big screen — that’s never going away.”
Zelnick said the current split between console and mobile is about even in the market, but mobile is growing more rapidly than consoles.
Although gaming giants like Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo have remained focused on traditional consoles to major success, rivals like Microsoft’s Xbox have hinted at more PC-based gaming for the next generation of hardware.
Gaming company Valve garnered significant buzz last week after announcing its new Steam Machine, a console-PC hybrid that can run PC games on a television or as a normal gaming computer.
Jensen Huang attends a reception for the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, at St James’ Palace in London, Brirain, Nov. 5, 2025.
Yui Mok | Via Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed in October that his company has $500 billion in orders, in 2025 and 2026 combined, for its chips that are at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom.
For a company that has seen its quarterly revenue grow nearly 600% over the past four years, Huang’s statement was a sign that Nvidia is confident of another year of strong — but slowing — growth for its next cycle of chips, implying that the AI boom still has room to run.
“This is how much business is on the books. Half a trillion dollars worth so far,” Huang said at the company’s GTC conference in Washington.
Huang included 2025 revenue so far, sales of Nvidia’s current Blackwell graphics processing units and next year’s Rubin GPUs and also related parts like networking. After parsing through the details of Huang’s remarks, analysts concluded that the statement signaled a meaningfully higher year by revenue in 2026 than Wall Street had previously expected.
“NVDA’s disclosures suggest clear upside to current consensus estimates,” wrote Wolfe Research analyst Chris Caso in a November note. Caso estimated that Huang’s data point suggested data center sales that could be $60 billion over prior calendar 2026 estimates. He has the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock.
But Nvidia stock is trading 5% under where it was when Huang called the company’s shot on Oct. 28.
It’s a reflection of the continued debate among investors about the AI boom, and whether a handful of big cloud companies called hyperscalers and AI labs are overspending on infrastructure.
When Nvidia reports third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, analysts polled by LSEG are expecting $1.25 in earnings per share on $54.9 billion of sales, which would be a 56% increase on a year-over-year basis. They’re also looking for guidance in the January quarter of $61.44 billion, which would indicate a reacceleration of growth.
Nvidia doesn’t provide more than one quarter of forward-looking guidance at earnings. But anything Huang says about the company’s sales backlog and outlook for calendar 2026 will be scrutinized not just for Nvidia’s outlook but also that of the broader tech industry. Analysts polled by LSEG currently expect $286.7 billion in sales for Nvidia in 2026.
‘Insatiable AI appetite’
At the Washington conference, Huang said the company has “visibility” into that revenue. That’s not surprising — Nvidia counts nearly every multitrillion-dollar tech company as a customer, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
During October earnings, all of those companies said they were boosting their capital expenditure spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, which means Nvidia chips.
Hyperscalers’ rising capex reflects “insatiable AI appetite,” wrote Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer in a note earlier this month. He has a buy rating on Nvidia stock.
Nvidia has also been an aggressive dealmaker during the quarter, and analysts will want to hear from Huang about the details of these partnerships.
The biggest deal was Nvidia agreeing to invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI equity in exchange for the AI startup buying between 4 million and 5 million GPUs over a period of years. Nvidia also agreed to invest $5 billion in former rival Intel. That deal would see the two chipmakers team up to enable Intel chips to work better with Nvidia GPUs.
After the October quarter ended, Nvidia took a $1 billion stake in Nokia to team up to integrate its GPUs into cellular network hardware of the Finnish company. Nvidia also continued investing in various startups.
Citi analyst Atif Malik said in a November note that the deal with OpenAI, in particular, will be an investor focus on Wednesday.
“Although concerns around the mix of debt and circular financing around AI capex froth exist, we fundamentally see AI supply below demand,” Malik wrote. He has the equivalent of a buy rating on the stock.
Nvidia has more than 90% of the market for AI GPUs. But some of its customers — including Amazon with its Tranium chips, Google with its TPU chips and OpenAI with forthcoming chips made in partnership with Broadcom — have promoted their custom semiconductors, application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, increasingly over the past three months.
Huang often speaks generally about Nvidia’s views on earnings calls with analysts and could elaborate about how the company sees rising competition, which investors would welcome, according to Citi.
All of these projections are without any China sales. The company’s Chinese-oriented chip, called the H20, was effectively restricted from being exported earlier this year before Huang made a deal with President Donald Trumpin August to get export licenses in exchange for the government getting 15% of China sales.
But since then, Nvidia representatives have made gloomy comments about the possibility of significant sales to China, and the company hasn’t announced a successor chip to the H20, which is getting old by AI chip standards. Schafer, the Oppenheimer analyst, said he believes China could represent an over $50 billion annual revenue opportunity.
When asked by CNBC in late October whether he wants to sell current Blackwell-generation chips to China, Huang said: “I hope so. But that’s a decision for President Trump to make.”
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang reacts during a press conference at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju on October 31, 2025.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images
This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.
Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. Tech troubles
After last week’s losses and with Nvidia’s can’t-miss earnings report on the horizon, investors are wondering what’s next for the artificial intelligence trade. Can the sector that has captivated Wall Street and Silicon Valley in recent years once again lead the market, or are investors in for more choppiness?
Here’s what to know:
2. Kugler’s case
Dr. Adriana Kugler, member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, speaks to The Economic Club of New York in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.
Kylie Cooper | Reuters
Months after former Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler’s mysterious resignation, an ethics report released Saturday shows she broke the central bank’s stock trading rules.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics found Kugler purchased shares of individual stocks instead of mutual funds, and made trades during the “blackout periods” around Fed policy meetings — both of which are violations of Fed rules. Kugler resigned after being denied a waiver by Fed Chair Jerome Powell for a disclosure form that showed she had prohibited stakes, Fed officials familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Speaking of the central bank: The Financial Times reported that New York Fed President John Williams met with Wall Street dealers about a lending facility last week. Williams was looking for feedback on the Fed’s use of a standing repo facility, a permanent lending tool that can backstop markets, per the report.
3. Hedge funds’ shopping carts
Warren Buffett and Greg Abel walk through the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 3, 2025.
David A. Grogen | CNBC
4. Traffic jam
An Alaska Airlines plane takes off as the Burbank FAA Air Traffic Control Tower is staffed Tuesday and flight operations return to normal at Hollywood Burbank Airport Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025.
Allen J. Schaben | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
The Federal Aviation Administration last night announced it is ending its mandated flight cuts at 40 major airports, effective this morning. More than 5 million travelers saw their flights canceled or delayed during the government shutdown, when air traffic controller staffing concerns led the FAA to impose restrictions.
The government shutdown may now be over, but the years-long air traffic controller shortage is still a problem. As CNBC’s Leslie Josephs reports, the closure may end up making it even harder to staff up. Airline executives want lawmakers to ensure controllers and other airport employees would be paid if the government closes again.
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5. New paths
2026 Jeep Grand Wagoneer
Jeep
After six straight years of declining domestic sales, Jeep wants to stop spinning its wheels.
As CNBC’s Michael Wayland reports, the SUV maker is aiming for a comeback after struggling with leadership changes, a dry product pipeline and consumers’ sticker shock. Jeep has seen some green shoots: The company recently saw its best quarterly sales growth in more than two years and has been rolling out new offerings such as the redesigned Grand Wagoneer.
Meanwhile, Fordceremonially opened its 2.1-million-square-foot facility in Dearborn, Michigan, over the weekend. The new complex replaces Ford’s so-called “Glass House” headquarters and includes a test track, dual-level courtyard and even $6 rotisserie chickens.
The Daily Dividend
Here’s some of the events and releases we’re following this week:
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon,Eric Rosenbaum, Kif Leswing, Deirdre Bosa,Michael Wayland, Jeff Cox, Dan Mangan, Pia Singh, Yun Li and Leslie Josephs, as well as Reuters, contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.