whenever you think of trusting base, remember this thread
jesse pollak’s coins
the head of base used the official coinbase X account to promote “base is for everyone” on zora. it spiked to $17M mcap in an hour. crashed 90% to $1.9M within 20 minutes. people thought it was an official base token. jesse said it was “an experiment” and that he “personally approved the post”
months later he launched his own JESSE token through the base app. called it a “creator coin, not a memecoin.” two snipers extracted $1.3M from it within seconds of launch. the token peaked at $25M and dumped. $50M in volume flowed through it and the regular users who trusted the head of base got sniped by bots while he collected LP fees
he then used those LP fees to buy other creator coins on zora. so the fees generated from his community getting sniped went to propping up more creator coins that also dumped
him and brian promoted tokens linked to balaji srinivasan and other figures. all crashed. one critic pointed out “the same users kept eating the downside on team-promoted tokens.” nobody at base adjusted
he endorsed a soulja boy token, a person zachxbt publicly documented running 73+ token promotions, 16 NFT collections, most of them rugs or abandoned, earning $730K+ from paid crypto scams. jesse invested $1,500 and promoted it publicly. zachxbt’s report was from 2023. it was public. the head of base either didn’t bother to check or didn’t care
he shared a GIF playing on “base is for everyone” that rotated through the phrases “base is for pimping” and “base is for squirting.” had to publicly apologize. the guy running a coinbase-backed chain, a publicly traded company, posting this to hundreds of thousands of followers
after all of this he said base won’t “pump tokens” or “support the chart behind the scenes.” the same person who launched multiple coins that dumped on his community won’t help yours. his charts get LP fees. yours get abandoned
the $BRIAN disaster
brian armstrong, CEO of coinbase, $50B+ publicly traded company, changed his pfp to a $BRIAN memecoin. 10,000 people bought in. the CEO of the chain is backing it: what could go wrong? he removed the pfp 23 hours later. coin went to zero. 10,000+ people down 99% after trusting the literal CEO
1/3
whenever you think of trusting base, remember this thread
jesse pollak’s coins
the head of base used the official coinbase X account to promote “base is for everyone” on zora. it spiked to $17M mcap in an hour. crashed 90% to $1.9M within 20 minutes. people thought it was an official base token. jesse said it was “an experiment” and that he “personally approved the post”
months later he launched his own JESSE token through the base app. called it a “creator coin, not a memecoin.” two snipers extracted $1.3M from it within seconds of launch. the token peaked at $25M and dumped. $50M in volume flowed through it and the regular users who trusted the head of base got sniped by bots while he collected LP fees
he then used those LP fees to buy other creator coins on zora. so the fees generated from his community getting sniped went to propping up more creator coins that also dumped
him and brian promoted tokens linked to balaji srinivasan and other figures. all crashed. one critic pointed out “the same users kept eating the downside on team-promoted tokens.” nobody at base adjusted
he endorsed a soulja boy token, a person zachxbt publicly documented running 73+ token promotions, 16 NFT collections, most of them rugs or abandoned, earning $730K+ from paid crypto scams. jesse invested $1,500 and promoted it publicly. zachxbt’s report was from 2023. it was public. the head of base either didn’t bother to check or didn’t care
he shared a GIF playing on “base is for everyone” that rotated through the phrases “base is for pimping” and “base is for squirting.” had to publicly apologize. the guy running a coinbase-backed chain, a publicly traded company, posting this to hundreds of thousands of followers
after all of this he said base won’t “pump tokens” or “support the chart behind the scenes.” the same person who launched multiple coins that dumped on his community won’t help yours. his charts get LP fees. yours get abandoned
the $BRIAN disaster
brian armstrong, CEO of coinbase, $50B+ publicly traded company, changed his pfp to a $BRIAN memecoin. 10,000 people bought in. the CEO of the chain is backing it: what could go wrong? he removed the pfp 23 hours later. coin went to zero. 10,000+ people down 99% after trusting the literal CEO
1/3
okay, I’ve shitposted and crashed out enough. this will be my last post about @base and why I think they will lose, and very much deserve to, in my view.
they have virtually no consideration for their users. I genuinely mean that. users are seen as metrics nothing more, volume, activity, and espcially juicy fees they can extract. the people behind those numbers feel like an afterthought.
second, they only seem to accept feedback that reinforces the narrative they already want to believe. even when something goes wrong, the story becomes, “we believed this was the right direction, but it didn’t work,” it’s convenient to say we pushed zora because we believed it was right, failing to mention that it was from ex-coinbase exec and they had huge stake from their coinbase ventures investement. they had incentives to push it so they did. they didn’t have majority stake in virtuals and bankr, so they ignored them eventhough they drove most volume on their chain. they lie to their users, and even worse, they have deep contempt for their users.
I don’t think they see it as failing their user base because they’re so disconnected from the people on their chain. they see charts, metrics, and volume and that’s it. as a result, I don’t think they believe they’ve actually done their users wrong.
I’m pretty sure the internal discussions right now are about damage control and optics, not about how terribly they fucked over the last group of people who still believed in them.