CoinShares: Crypto's Best Kept Secret?

On quality, CoinShares looks more like a specialised financial services business than a typical crypto stock. The company has remained profitable every year since 2016, navigating multiple crypto downturns without reporting an annual loss. That resilience comes from a diversified model combining recurring asset management fees with an institutional capital markets business providing trading, liquidity and securities services.

Together, these activities have supported earnings across market cycles. Despite this track record, CoinShares continues to trade at valuation levels more commonly associated with speculative crypto businesses. The investment case rests on a simple idea: the market may eventually place greater value on the quality and consistency of the business than on the volatility of the sector it operates in.

CoinShares spent more than a decade building one of the leading digital asset investment platforms in Europe. As a result, the company holds a dominant market share and captures a disproportionate amount of industry revenues. In a fragmented market shaped by different regulators, languages, and distribution networks, that position has proven difficult to replicate. The European market is also characterised by more complex product offerings across a broader set of underlying crypto assets compared to the US. As such, large asset managers have struggled to enter the European market, leading to very different pricing dynamics. While US crypto fund fees were slashed to the bone in 2025, CoinShares broadly maintained fees, and even expanded margins, on a wider, higher-fee range rather than just plain bitcoin products.

That same playbook, winning hard markets others find too complex, is now being aimed at a far bigger prize. Following the acquisition of Valkyrie and its Nasdaq listing, CoinShares is now pursuing opportunities in the United States, the world's largest asset management market. Success is far from guaranteed, but if the company can replicate even part of its European success in the US, the growth opportunity is substantial.

Most investors view CoinShares as a digital asset manager. Increasingly, management sees a broader opportunity: helping build the infrastructure of a financial system that is gradually moving onto blockchain-based rails. Stablecoins, tokenized assets and blockchain-based settlement are already gaining traction among major financial institutions. As one of the few European firms holding both MiFID and MiCA licences, CoinShares combines regulatory permissions with more than a decade of digital asset expertise. This is not yet a major contributor to earnings, but it could become an important source of long-term growth if financial markets continue their shift toward blockchain-based infrastructure.

• European retail opening: The UK, France and Italy opened broad retail access to crypto ETPs in 2025, with more MiCA-enabled markets to follow. As the incumbent platform, CoinShares is positioned to win a meaningful share of this multi-year expansion.
  
  

• Scaling active strategies: Actively managed digital asset strategies for institutions carry the highest fees in asset management. Growing this layer would lift overall margins and add higher-quality, more durable revenue.

• The on-chain finance shift: CoinShares holds both MiFID and MiCA licences, a rare combination that lets it offer regulated products natively on blockchain rails. If finance migrates on-chain as management expect, early positioning could prove valuable.
  
  

• A foundational acquisition target, or acquirer: With deep custody, tax and digital asset expertise and a clean balance sheet, CoinShares could either consolidate smaller players or become a strategic prize for anyone building a 24/7, on-chain trading platform.

• Building US research coverage: KBW initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and a $9 target shortly after listing. More analysts picking up the stock would raise its profile and help close the gap between how it trades and how peers are valued.
  
  

• First US-listed results and capital returns: As a newly Nasdaq-listed company free of debt, CoinShares can now consider share buybacks under US rules. Its first clean quarterly reporting cycle would give investors a clearer read on the underlying business.

CoinShares earns most of its money as fees on assets under management, and those assets are digital currencies whose prices swing sharply. When bitcoin rallies, assets and earnings rise; when it falls, both shrink. In addition, much of the the company’s stated available capital is held in similar digital assets meaning its perceived financial cushion is subject to the same price volatility. The company has shown it stays profitable through downturns, but a long crypto winter would still squeeze revenue, inflows, and the valuation. Sentiment shifts, regulatory shocks, and price crashes are largely outside management's control.

CoinShares can, at first glance, be genuinely hard to understand. Alongside a straightforward fee-earning fund business sits a capital markets desk doing sophisticated trading, lending to a handful of elite counterparties, and an on-chain initiative few investors can evaluate. Even seasoned investors can struggle to pin down exactly what they are buying. The Nasdaq listing is also recent, meaning regular quarterly reporting has not yet begun and analyst coverage is thin, so there is little independent research to help investors get comfortable.

Additionally, US investors may take time to understand that the European crypto ETP market is very different to that of the US. It is defined by its fragmentation, lack of dominant players (meaning less fee compression) and broader range of underlying crypto assets through ETPs. By misapplying US market assumptions to Europe’s context, investors may not recognise the value of the European business. This culminates in an opacity that may be part of why the shares trade at a steep discount to peers, and the gap could persist until the story becomes simpler to grasp.

Much of the growth case rests on things that have not happened yet. The first is the US push. America is the world's biggest asset management market, but also its most brutally competitive: it is dominated by giants like BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard, and fees on crypto funds there have already been cut to the bone. CoinShares arrives as a small newcomer, and its 2024 purchase of Valkyrie gives it a foothold rather than a dominant position. Winning meaningful share will take time and money, and there is no guarantee the European playbook travels. The second bet is on-chain finance. CoinShares' ambition to run regulated products natively on blockchain rails depends on a financial system that is still largely being built, with uncertain timing, economics and rules. Both bets are credible and both could pay off handsomely, but equally either could prove slower, costlier or less profitable than hoped.