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Good Morning!
Here are today’s leading headlines:
- Major cryptocurrencies decline after an early-week surge; BTC priced at $64.2k, while ETH remains stable at $1,885
- ETFs attract significant investments with $108M for BTC and $54M for ETH
- Jesse Pollak transfers control of the Base App to Cobie, admitting he was incorrect about content coins
- Ostium suffers an $18M loss in the latest DeFi attack
- Trump is anticipated to meet with a senator today to discuss the ethics provisions of the Clarity Act
🔵 Pollak Transfers Base App to Cobie, Admits Mistake Regarding Content Coins
Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive overseeing the Base blockchain, has transferred the Base application back to Coinbase and to notable trader Cobie. Cobie joined Coinbase following its acquisition of his fundraising platform, Echo, and Pollak has decided to concentrate on the Base blockchain itself rather than the application.
In his announcement, Pollak outlined his strategy for 2024-2025, which hinges on two main ideas: that builders will drive adoption and that onchain social will foster growth. While he remains confident in the first idea, he openly acknowledged that the second was misguided. He stated that the social aspects he promoted, including Farcaster, Zora, miniapps, and creator coins, have “disintegrated completely,” leaving Base lagging behind competitors in areas like perps, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments. He concluded with a public apology, saying, “hopefully we can shut up about content coins now. i was wrong and i’m sorry.” This sentiment mirrors earlier comments from Brian Armstrong, who remarked that Base “messed up” regarding content coins.
Pollak aims to establish Base as “the blockchain for global finance,” arguing that integrating crypto, stablecoins, perps, prediction markets, and tokenization could onboard a billion users. He has identified trading, payments, and agents as Base’s top three priorities for 2026.
Cobie will take charge of trading products at Coinbase (CB app / Pro / Base app) and faces significant competition from multiple sources: 1) Centralized exchanges like Kraken, which are eager for growth ahead of a potential IPO; 2) memecoin applications such as Pump Fun and Fomo that boast hundreds of thousands of users; 3) Robinhood, which has introduced competing products and made headlines onchain this past week; and 4) Kalshi, expanding its prediction market into the perps sector. Cobie certainly has a challenging journey ahead, but he could be the best candidate in the crypto space for this task.
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
- Major cryptocurrencies experience a midweek pullback; BTC down 1% to $64.2k; ETH up 1% to $1,885; SOL down 2% to $76; HYPE down 3% to $65.85
- ONDO (+16%), NIGHT (+4%), and UNI (+4%) were among the top gainers
- Oil remains steady at $80; Gold remains unchanged at $4,035
- Stock futures show mixed results; DOW up 0.2%, Nasdaq down 0.7%
- Stripe has made a $53 billion bid to acquire PayPal in partnership with Advent, a deal that would merge Stripe's Bridge and Tempo stablecoin infrastructure with PayPal's PYUSD
- Strategy’s CEO expressed that the company feels “very secure” until Bitcoin reaches $8,000-$10,000
- Trump is expected to attend a White House meeting later today to discuss the contentious ethics section of the CLARITY Act
- Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize are collaborating on blockchain-based IPOs, advancing tokenization from secondary trading to primary issuance
- South Korea will revise a 76-year-old law to categorize crypto as national assets, marking a significant step toward its integration into the financial system
- Japan has reclassified crypto as a financial asset, allowing for a flat 20% capital-gains tax rate
- Chamath released a 73-page report on crypto privacy, analyzing models such as Monero and ZCash
Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
- Bitcoin ETFs recorded $107M in net inflows on Wednesday, while ETH ETFs saw $54M in inflows
Meme Coin Tracker
- Meme leaders mostly showed declines; DOGE down 1%, SHIB down 2%, PEPE down 2%, PENGU up 1%, TRUMP unchanged, BONK down 5%
- Robinhood chain tokens were led by Tendies (+400%) and Index (+20%), while Cashcat fell an additional 20% and Pons dropped 35%
- Solana leaders included HBULL (+55%) and SOLdiers (+48x); ANSEM declined 25% to $170M
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
- Ostium sustained an $18M exploit, as the ongoing wave of oracle attacks continues to affect DeFi
- Noxa, the launchpad fueling Robinhood Chain’s memecoin surge, suddenly ceased operations after generating approximately $12 million in fees, halting token launches over spam issues and redirecting all revenue to creators
- A Stanford study identified manipulation in Polymarket's five-minute Bitcoin markets, revealing that 821 traders influenced the settlement price with last-minute Binance orders to profit around $8.2 million
🚚 What is happening in NFTs?
- NFT leaders mostly remained stable; Punks stayed at 32.4 ETH, BAYC down 1% to 8.9 ETH, Pudgy up 1% to 4.42 ETH; Hypurr’s price increased by 8% to 188 HYPE
- Invisible Friends (+50%) and Mocaverse (+26%) led the top gainers; nameless dread (+30%) and beef brothko (+44%) saw significant increases following auctions by diewithmostlikes