Morning Minute: Base Hands Its App Over to Cobie

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our new daily news show covering all of the top stories in 5 minutes, downloadable on Apple Pod or Spotify.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall after early week rally; BTC at $64.2k, ETH steady at $1,885
• ETFs see more inflows with $108M for BTC and $54M for ETH
• Jesse Pollak hands Base App over to Cobie, says he was wrong about content coins
• Ostium exploited for $18M in DeFi’s latest attack
• Trump expected to meet with Senator today to talk Clarity Act ethics provisions

🔵 Base Hands Its App to Cobie as Jesse Pollak Admits “I Was Wrong” on Social

Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive who has been running the Base blockchain, handed the consumer Base app back to Coinbase and gave it to the infamous trader Cobie. Cobie joined Coinbase after it acquired his onchain fundraising platform Echo, and Pollak says he’s now focused on the Base chain itself rather than the app.

In his announcement post, Pollak said his 2024-2025 strategy rested on two bets: that builders would drive adoption and that growth would come from onchain social. While he stands by the first, he flatly admitted the second was wrong. The social corner he championed, Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and creator coins, has in his words “disintegrated completely,” leaving Base trailing rivals in perps, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments. He closed with a public apology: “hopefully we can shut up about content coins now. i was wrong and i’m sorry.” That apology echoes Brian Armstrong’s comments from earlier this week when he said Base “messed up” on content coins.

Pollak now wants to build Base into “the blockchain for global finance,” arguing that the combination of crypto, stablecoins, perps, prediction markets, and tokenization can bring a billion people onchain. He set trading, payments, and agents as Base’s three priorities for 2026.

As for Cobie, he will be responsible for trading products at Coinbase (CB app / Pro / Baseapp). And he’s got his work cut out for him. He faces competition on multiple fronts: 1) CEXs like Kraken, which are hungry for growth ahead of potential IPO, 2) memecoin apps like Pump Fun and Fomo who have hundreds of thousands of users, 3) Robinhood itself, which offers competing products and made a major splash onchain this past week, and 4) Kalshi, which is growing its prediction market into the perps space. He’s facing an uphill battle to say the least. But if anyone in crypto is capable, Cobie might be the single best bet…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are mostly red in midweek pullback; BTC -1% at $64.2k; ETH +1% at $1,885; SOL -2% at $76; HYPE -3% at $65.85
• ONDO (+16%), NIGHT (+4%) and UNI (+4%) led top movers
• Oil even at $80; Gold even at $4,035
• Stock futures are mixed; DOW +0.2%, Nasdaq -0.7%
• Stripe bid $53 billion to acquire PayPal alongside Advent, a deal that would merge Stripe’s Bridge and Tempo stablecoin rails with PayPal’s PYUSD
• Strategy’s CEO said the company feels “very secure” until Bitcoin hits $8,000-$10,000
• Trump is expected to attend a White House meeting later today to hash out the CLARITY Act’s contested ethics section
• Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize are collaborating on blockchain-based IPOs, pushing tokenization from secondary trading into primary issuance
• South Korea will modify a 76-year-old law to classify crypto as national assets, a foundational step toward integrating it into the financial system
• Japan reclassified crypto as a financial asset, paving the way for a flat 20% capital-gains rate
• Chamath published a 73-page report on crypto privacy, evaluating the models of Monero and ZCash amongst others

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly red; DOGE -1%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -2%, PENGU +1%, TRUMP even, BONK -5%
• Robinhood chain tokens were led by Tendies (+400%) and Index (+20%) while Cashcat fell another 20% and Pons fell 35%
• Solana leaders included HBULL (+55%) and SOLdiers (+48x); ANSEM fell 25% to $170M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly 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%) led top movers; nameless dread (+30%) and beef brothko (+44%) big movers for diewithmostlikes following his auctions