Coinbase has paid $375 million to accumulate Echo, the funding platform based by well-known crypto OG, dealer, and YouTuber, Jordan Fish, a.okay.a. Cobie.
The trade’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, has additionally paid $25 million for an NFT that revives Cobie’s UpOnly podcast with co-host LedgerStatus.
Coinbase says it acquired Echo “to create more accessible, efficient, and transparent capital markets.” It additionally says that Echo will assist tasks elevate capital immediately from their communities by way of non-public gross sales or by a self-hosted public token sale utilizing Sonar.
“While we’ll start with crypto token sales via Sonar, we plan to expand support to tokenized securities and real-world assets over time, leveraging Echo’s infrastructure,” Coinbase mentioned.
Cobie mentioned, “Echo will remain a standalone platform under its current brand for now, but we will integrate sonar’s public sale product into Coinbase.”
We began constructing Echo round 2 years in the past in an try and try to change the market dynamics round crypto fundraising.
Right now, we’re becoming a member of Coinbase, however the mission stays the identical.
We’re gonna use the firepower of this behemoth to offer higher alternatives to… https://t.co/E6KYMl8GBe
— echo (@echodotxyz) October 21, 2025
Echo beta testing began final yr, and launched its Sonar characteristic in Might. Sonar permits tasks to host public token gross sales and promote them to their followers outdoors of Echo which, resulting from authorized restraints, couldn’t initially be achieved beneath Echo’s construction.
The actual-time blockchain undertaking MegaETH is reportedly planning to launch an preliminary coin providing on Sonar. The agency had beforehand offered $10 million value of its token privately by Echo.
It solely value $25 million to convey Up Solely again
Hours earlier than the Echo deal, Armstrong introduced he’d simply burned the UpOnly NFT. Cobie mentioned earlier this yr that he’d begin a brand new sequence of UpOnly if someone purchased the NFT, and set the hefty $25 million price ticket.
The NFT got here with its personal quasi-contract that Armstrong must abide by. It states that there can be no sponsorship rights, the hosts can name Armstrong an “idiot” for getting the NFT, and the duo could ignore the client for the complete period of the eight-episode season.
Cobie advised as we speak that the stream will doubtless be broadcast on Twitch, and shot down the thought of streaming it on Coinbase’s personal social media platform, Zora, since every uploaded stream would turn into its personal tradable token.
He mentioned he “would happily use a crypto platform if it didn’t also make you launch a token,” which additionally occurs to rule out the memecoin platform Pump Enjoyable.
The NFT worth alone breaks right down to $3.1 million per episode. If we assume that each episode can be three hours lengthy, that’s 1,000,000 {dollars} an hour, and over $17,000 per minute.
It’s not fully clear, nevertheless, simply how legally binding the textual content on an NFT is, and whether or not or not Coinbase would possibly push again to get some type of promotion in there, given its daring historical past of ads.
Cobie says the brand new sequence will now even be known as “Unc Only” because of the host’s “severe old age.”
“It has been three years since up only ended. I was in my 20s when it started, now I have grey hair. We will rename it Unc Only and I will spend $25m on cosmetic surgery. See ya soon,” he mentioned.
