Shares of Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: COIN) were up by around 5% in morning trading on Friday as Daiwa Securities analyst Carlton Lai upgraded the stock to Buy from Outperform. Lai expects that the cryptocurrency exchange could be a "key beneficiary of increased ETH staking demand" after ethereum (ETH-USD) switches to a proof-of-stake method from a proof-of-work consensus method later this month. Analyst Lai pointed out that this was because COIN was one of the largest holders of Ethereum on a global basis holding around 15% of all circulating ethereum on its platform.
