Base Hands Its App Over to Cobie as Jesse Pollak Admits Social Bet Was Wrong
Coinbase executive Jesse Pollak has handed control of the Base consumer app to prominent trader Cobie, admitting his 2024-2025 strategy focused on onchain social was wrong. Pollak said the social ecosystem including Farcaster, Zora, and creator coins has 'disintegrated completely,' leaving Base trailing rivals in perps, prediction markets, tokenization, and payments. He apologized for content coins, echoing Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's earlier comments. Pollak now aims to build Base into 'the blockchain for global finance' with priorities on trading, payments, and agents for 2026. Cobie, who joined Coinbase after it acquired his platform Echo, will oversee trading products at Coinbase including CB app, Pro, and Baseapp. The article also covers broader crypto market movements with BTC at $64.2k and ETH at $1,885, ETF inflows, an $18M DeFi exploit on Ostium, and other industry developments including Stripe's $53 billion bid for PayPal and regulatory changes in South Korea and Japan.
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