Wall Street Firm Maintains Buy Ratings for Four Crypto Companies: Valuation Thesis Shifts to AI Infrastructure, Capital Market Tools
BlockBeats News, May 19th - Several Wall Street institutions on Monday gave a unanimous assessment of crypto companies: the market is still valuing these companies using traditional trading platform metrics, but they are actually gradually transitioning into AI infrastructure, capital market tools, and digital finance platforms. Benchmark, TD Cowen, and Mizuho each maintained a "Buy" rating on Bitdeer, DeFi Technologies, Strive, and Gemini on Monday, despite some target price adjustments due to industry valuation compression.
Among them, Benchmark believes that Bitdeer's greatest value lies in its global power resource portfolio covering the United States, Norway, Bhutan, and other regions, with a total capacity of approximately 3GW. Analysts pointed out that as the demand for AI data centers surges, power is becoming a scarce resource. The Tydal project in Norway is expected to provide about 180 MW of AI computing power hosting capacity, and is currently in advanced-stage negotiations with potential large tenants. Meanwhile, Bitdeer's AI cloud business's annual recurring revenue has increased from around $10 million in January to about $69 million by the end of April.
Benchmark also noted that DeFi Technologies is transitioning from an asset management company to a digital asset capital market infrastructure platform. Its CEO stated that future stablecoins, Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization, and digital securities issuance all require custody services, and the company plans to launch its self-developed custody system in the third quarter of this year. In addition, its institutional OTC trading business, Stillman Digital, saw a 38% year-on-year growth in trading commissions in the first quarter. As of the end of the first quarter, the company held approximately $156 million in cash, stablecoins, and crypto assets, with a current market value of about $275 million.
On the other hand, TD Cowen raised Strive's target price to $30, citing its innovative "daily dividend" perpetual preferred stock design that is expected to enhance Bitcoin accumulation efficiency. Mizuho, on the other hand, believes that Gemini is transitioning from a single crypto brokerage platform to a diversified financial market platform. Despite a more than 50% decline in trading volume in the first quarter, Gemini's trading revenue remained flat, indicating that its revenue structure is shifting from high-volatility spot trading to more stable businesses such as credit card, futures markets, and clearing. Analysts believe that such companies are moving closer to traditional financial infrastructure firms rather than purely crypto trading platforms.
