Jesse Pollak Concedes His Onchain Social Bet Failed and Puts the Base App in Cobie's Hands Coinbase executive Jesse Pollak has returned the consumer Base app to Coinbase and handed it to the trader Cobie, admitting his bet on onchain social 'was wrong' as he refocuses Base on becoming the chain for global finance. The consumer version of the Base app is changing hands. Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive who has spent the last couple of years steering the Base blockchain, has handed the app back to Coinbase and placed it under the well known trader Cobie, all while publicly admitting that one of the two big bets behind his strategy simply did not work out. Why the Base app is moving to Cobie Cobie landed at Coinbase after the exchange bought his onchain fundraising platform, Echo. With that acquisition, he now takes charge of the consumer Base app, while Pollak says he wants to step away from running the app and pour his attention into the Base chain itself. In practical terms, the person who built Base is stepping back from its front facing product to focus on the underlying network. Pollak admits his social bet "was wrong" In the post announcing the change, Pollak laid out the thinking that guided him through 2024 and 2025. His plan rested on two wagers: first, that builders would be the ones to drive adoption, and second, that the next wave of growth would come from onchain social. He still believes in the first. The second, he said flatly, was a mistake. The onchain social scene he had backed so heavily, including Farcaster, Zora, miniapps and creator coins, has in his words "disintegrated completely." That collapse left Base lagging its rivals across perps, prediction markets, tokenization and payments, the areas where real activity has been concentrating. He ended with a rare public apology, writing, "hopefully we can shut up about content coins now. i was wrong and i'm sorry." The mea culpa lined up with what Brian Armstrong had said earlier in the week, when he conceded that Base had "messed up" on content coins. A new pitch: Base as the chain for global finance With the social experiment behind him, Pollak now wants to reposition Base as "the blockchain for global finance." His argument is that mixing crypto, stablecoins, perps, prediction markets and tokenization together can eventually pull a billion people onchain. To get there, he has named three priorities for Base in 2026: trading, payments and agents. Cobie inherits a crowded, competitive job Cobie, meanwhile, will own trading products across Coinbase, spanning the CB app, Pro and Baseapp. It is a demanding assignment, and the competition is coming from every direction. First, there are centralized exchanges like Kraken that are chasing growth ahead of a possible IPO. Second, memecoin apps such as Pump Fun and Fomo already count hundreds of thousands of users. Third, Robinhood is pushing competing products and made a big onchain move this past week. Fourth, Kalshi is expanding its prediction market ambitions into the perps arena. It is an uphill fight by any measure, but if there is anyone in crypto equipped to take it on, Cobie may be the safest bet of all. Where the market stands The majors slipped in a midweek pullback after rallying earlier in the week. BTC was down 1% at $64.2k, while ETH edged up 1% to $1,885. SOL fell 2% to $76 and HYPE dropped 3% to $65.85. Among the top movers, ONDO climbed 16%, with NIGHT and UNI each up 4%. Outside crypto, oil held flat at $80 and gold was unchanged at $4,035. Stock futures were mixed, with the DOW up 0.2% and the Nasdaq off 0.7%. Deal-making and policy moves Stripe put in a $53 billion bid to acquire PayPal alongside Advent, a tie-up that would fuse Stripe's Bridge and Tempo stablecoin rails with PayPal's PYUSD. Strategy's CEO said the company feels "very secure" unless Bitcoin sinks to the $8,000 to $10,000 range. On the policy side, Trump is expected at a White House meeting later today to work through the contested ethics section of the CLARITY Act. Cantor Fitzgerald and Securitize are teaming up on blockchain-based IPOs, a step that pushes tokenization beyond secondary trading and into primary issuance. Overseas, South Korea plans to amend a 76-year-old law to classify crypto as national assets, an early move toward folding it into the financial system, while Japan reclassified crypto as a financial asset, clearing the path for a flat 20% capital-gains rate. Chamath also published a 73-page report on crypto privacy, weighing the designs of Monero and ZCash among others. ETFs, treasuries and meme tokens The Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $107M in net inflows on Wednesday, and the ETH ETFs added $54M. Meme leaders were mostly in the red, with DOGE down 1%, SHIB down 2%, PEPE down 2%, PENGU up 1%, TRUMP flat and BONK off 5%. Among Robinhood chain tokens, Tendies surged 400% and Index rose 20%, while Cashcat slid another 20% and Pons dropped 35%. On Solana, HBULL jumped 55% and SOLdiers exploded 48x, even as ANSEM fell 25% to $170M. Exploits and the protocol tracker Ostium was hit by an $18M exploit as the run of oracle attacks battering DeFi rolled on. Noxa, the launchpad behind the memecoin boom on Robinhood Chain, shut down abruptly after collecting roughly $12 million in fees, halting new token launches over spam concerns and redirecting all revenue to creators. A Stanford study flagged manipulation in Polymarket's five-minute Bitcoin markets, finding that 821 traders nudged the settlement price with last-second Binance orders to pocket around $8.2 million. NFT check NFT floors were mostly flat. Punks held at 32.4 ETH, BAYC slipped 1% to 8.9 ETH and Pudgy ticked up 1% to 4.42 ETH, while Hypurr's rose 8% to 188 HYPE. Invisible Friends led the movers with a 50% jump and Mocaverse gained 26%, while nameless dread was up 30% and beef brothko rose 44%, both big movers for diewithmostlikes following his auctions. What this means for you • For crypto traders: Majors pulled back midweek, with BTC near $64.2k and ETH around $1,885, so short-term prices look soft even though ETFs are still taking in money. • For Base and Coinbase users: The consumer Base app now sits under Cobie, and Base's focus is shifting toward trading, payments and agents, so expect the product to lean more into finance than social features. • A caution flag: Fresh exploits and manipulation findings, from Ostium's $18M loss to flagged trades on Polymarket, are a reminder to be careful with newer DeFi and prediction-market venues. Questions & Answers 1. Who is taking over the Base app now? The well known trader Cobie, who joined Coinbase after it acquired his platform Echo. 2. What did Jesse Pollak admit he got wrong? His bet that onchain social, including Farcaster, Zora, miniapps and creator coins, would drive growth; he said that scene disintegrated completely. 3. What is Base's new direction? Pollak wants Base to become the blockchain for global finance, with trading, payments and agents as its 2026 priorities. 4. How much did the Ostium exploit cost? $18M, part of a continuing wave of oracle attacks hitting DeFi. 5. What did the Stanford study find about Polymarket's Bitcoin markets? It found 821 traders manipulated the five-minute settlement price with last-second Binance orders to earn around $8.2 million. 6. How did the Bitcoin and Ether ETFs perform? Bitcoin ETFs saw $107M in net inflows on Wednesday and ETH ETFs saw $54M. https://trendkia.com/en/business/nachena-soshala-vala-danva-phela-jesse-pollak-ne-base-aipa-cobie-ko-saunpa-aura-galati-mani-8152 TrendKia — Har trend, sabse pehle.