Morning Minute: Base Hands His App to Cobie

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Today’s top stories:

• Crypto majors fall after early weekly rally; BTC at $64.2k, ETH stable at $1,885
• ETFs see the most inflows with $108M for BTC and $54M for ETH
• Jesse Pollak gives the Base App to Cobie, saying he made a mistake about the money
• Ostium spent $18M on the latest DeFi attack
• Trump is expected to meet with Senators today to discuss the Clarity Act

🔵 Base Hands His App For Cobie As Jesse Pollak Admits “I Was Wrong” On Social

Jesse Pollak, Coinbase CEO who has been running the Base blockchain, they also returned the consumer program to Coinbase He gave it to the evil merchant Cobie. Cobie joined Coinbase after acquiring its onchain platform Echo, and Pollak says he is now focusing on Base chain instead of software.

In his announcement, Pollak said his strategy for 2024-2025 is based on two passions: that developers will drive adoption and that growth will come from onchain social. When he stood up for the first one, he admitted that the second one was wrong. The social networks he inspired, Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and developer funds, in his words have “completely collapsed,” leaving Base fighters behind perps, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments. He closed with an apology to the public: “I hope we can close the deal now. I made a mistake and I’m sorry.” That apology echoes what Brian Armstrong said earlier this week when he said Base had “messed up” about the money.

Pollak now wants to build Base into a “blockchain for global finance,” arguing that a combination of crypto, stablecoins, perps, prediction markets, and tokens could bring a billion people onchain. They put sales, salaries, and sponsors as the three priorities of Base in 2026.

But Cobie, will be responsible for trading in Coinbase (CB app / Pro / Baseapp). And he has prepared his work for him. They face competition on several fronts: 1) CEXs like Kraken, who are hungry for growth ahead of a possible IPO, 2) memecoin programs like Pump Fun and Fomo with hundreds of users, 3) Robinhood itself, which offers competitive products and made a big explosion on the chain last week, and 4) Kalshi market, which is growing on the market of space predictions. He is facing an uphill battle to say the least. But if every crypto is capable, Cobie could be the best bet…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are often in the red during the weekly pullback; BTC -1% at $64.2k; ETH +1% at $1,885; SOL -2% on $76; HYPE -3% at $65.85
• ONDO (+16%)NIGHT (+4%) and UNI (+4%) led the top performers
• Oil even $80; Gold even $4,035
• The future it mixes; DOW +0.2%, Nasdaq -0.7%
• Line pay $53 billion to buy PayPal along with Advent, a partnership that will combine Stripe’s Bridge rails with Tempo stablecoin and PayPal’s PYUSD.
• Chief Strategy Officer he said the company feels “very safe” until Bitcoin hits $8,000-$10,000
• Trumpet expected to do so to the White House meeting later today to expedite the CLARITY Act portion of the challenged conduct
• Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize and collaboration on blockchain-based IPOspushing tokenization from secondary trading to primary issuance
• South Korea they will to change the 76-year-old law classifying crypto as a national currency, the first step towards integration into the economy
• Japan reclassified crypto as a financial assetpaving the way for a 20% profit margin
• Math printed a 73-page report on crypto privacy, testing the likes of Monero and ZCash among others

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders he was especially red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -2%, PENGU +1%, TRUMP though, BONK -5%
• Robinhood signs led by Tendies (+400%) and Index (+20%) while Cashcat also fell 20% and Pons fell 35%
• Leaders of Solana including HBULL (+55%) and SOOLdiers (+48x); ANSEM fell 25% to $170M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• Directors of NFT most of it was flat; Punks even at 32.4 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.9 ETH, Pudgy +1% at 4.42 ETH; Hypurr’s +8% at 188 HYPE
• Invisible Friends (+50%) and Mocaverse (+26%) top management; nameless fear (+ 30%) and beef brothko (+ 44%) big movers who like to die are the most likely to follow his trade