Morning Minute: Coinbase Teases a Network Token

Morning Minute is a day by day e-newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The evaluation and opinions expressed are his personal and don’t essentially replicate these of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Right this moment’s prime information:

Crypto majors flat whereas shares and gold hit new ATHs; BTC at $115,300
Coinbase teases a community token in exploration
Polymarket’s newest filings trace at potential token drop
Saylor & others to satisfy with Sen. Lummis right now to debate Strategic BTC Reserve
MetaMask debuts its mUSD stablecoin

🔥 Coinbase Teases a Community Token

After years of ready, Base maxis are about to be rewarded.

A Base token is lastly within the works.

📌 What Occurred

Coinbase’s L2, Base, is formally “exploring a network token.”

Jesse Pollak revealed it on stage at BaseCamp, with Coinbase reiterating the plan on X.

There is no such thing as a timeline or design but, however they emphasised doing it within the open and with U.S. regulators.

Base already posts heavyweight utilization:

~13M day by day transactions
~865k lively addresses
~$5B TVL
~$1.28B 24h DEX quantity

These metrics would make a Base token catapult to the highest of any L2 token checklist upon its debut.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“We’re going to be exploring a community token… I shall be up entrance with y’all, it’s early.” – Jesse Pollak at BaseCamp
“We’re exploring a Base community token. It may very well be an awesome instrument for accelerating decentralization and increasing creator and developer progress within the ecosystem. To be clear, there aren’t any definitive plans. We’re simply updating our philosophy. As of now, we’re exploring it.” – Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO, on X

I might hammer no on this

Base calmly teasing a token is indicative that the token is not able to be shipped. Neither is the governance.

This fall about to start quickly too, I doubt they’re going to rush to get this out by EOY.

I would count on a base token in some unspecified time in the future early-mid NEXT yr. https://t.co/TKaBv885z4

— Eddie (@DancingEddie_) September 16, 2025

🧠 Why It Issues

If Coinbase truly drops a community token, the market will instantly attain for comps.

Listed here are the cleanest comparables and quick-and-dirty valuation ranges utilizing right now’s on-chain and market information

Utilization + TVL snapshot (right now):

Base (fdv TBD): ~$5.0B TVL; DEX quantity (24h): ~$1.28B
Arbitrum (fdv of $5B): ~$3.45B TVL; DEX quantity (24h): ~$521M
Optimism (fdv of $3.2B): Bridged TVL: ~$2.27B; DEX quantity (24h): ~$29M
BNB Chain (fdv of $128B): DEX quantity (24h): ~$2.48B

Utilizing these numbers (ignoring BNB for now), a back-of-the-napkin situation for a Base token’s market cap would put it at $6B-$7B truthful worth out of the gate.

However with COIN inventory buying and selling at $84B, it could in all probability additionally get a little bit of a “Coinbase premium,” like BNB will get with Binance.

That possible pushes it to the $8B-$10B vary (after all, pending tokenomics).

So sure, it is a large deal. A brand new 10-figure token may be incoming.

Now the important thing questions develop into – When token? And when airdrop?

Sadly, possible not quickly in any respect.

I’d guess This fall 2026 for a Base token based mostly on the group’s “exploratory” feedback.l

As for the airdrop, I’d wager on the neighborhood being rewarded. Launching a token with out an airdrop can be a deathblow to Coinbase sentiment.

So when you haven’t already, perhaps use the Base community. Rewards are possible coming to those that wait…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

Just a few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

In Company Treasuries

Ahead Industries completed a $1.6B SOL buy turning into the most important SOL TreasuryCo
BMNR disclosed holdings of two.151M ETH ($9.73B) and $569M in money
Helius raised $500M to construct a Solana TreasuryCo
Technique purchased simply 525 BTC for about $60.2M final week, lifting holdings to 638,985 BTC
David Bailey’s NAKA inventory plunged ~55% after PIPE shares registration and writing a letter to shareholders encouraging them to promote in the event that they needed

In Memes

Memecoin leaders are mostly flat; DOGE even, Shiba -1%, PEPE -1%, PENGU -1%, BONK +1%, TRUMP -1%, SPX -1%, and FARTCOIN even
Alex Becker’s StrSzn streamer coin did over $69M in quantity and generated $300k+ in charges (mc at $5M), as most streamer cash fell considerably
RUNNER (+465%) and GoProCat (+200%) had been prime movers
ZORA jumped 22% on the again of the Base token information

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

This is a rundown of main token, protocol and airdrop information from the day:

🤖 AI x Crypto

Part devoted to headlines within the AI sector of crypto:

Total market cap even at $13.6B, leaders had been combined
FARTCOIN (even), VIRTUAL (+1%), TIBBIR (+2%), aixbt (-1%) & ai16z (+1%)
CLANKER (+12%), YNE (+10%) and Nuit (+6%) led prime movers

🚚 What is occurring in NFTs?

Right here is the checklist of different notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

ETH NFT leaders were mixed; Punks +1% at 48.9 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 10.1, BAYC +1% at 8.95 ETH
Shrimpers (+18%) and Gemesis (+11%) had been prime movers
Summary NFTs were very green led by Gigaverse ROMs and Noah’s Ark
Seedphrase acquired Wolf Game and shall be shifting it to Summary