Coinbase has paid $375 million to amass Echo, the funding platform based by well-known crypto OG, dealer, and YouTuber, Jordan Fish, a.ok.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 instantly from their communities through non-public gross sales or by means of 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 stated.
Cobie stated, “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 to attempt to change the market dynamics round crypto fundraising.
Immediately, 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 Could. Sonar permits tasks to host public token gross sales and promote them to their followers outdoors of Echo which, attributable to authorized restraints, couldn’t initially be completed beneath Echo’s construction.
The actual-time blockchain venture 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 means of Echo.
It solely value $25 million to deliver Up Solely again
Hours earlier than the Echo deal, Armstrong introduced he’d simply burned the UpOnly NFT. Cobie stated earlier this yr that he’d begin a brand new collection 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 should abide by. It states that there will probably be no sponsorship rights, the hosts can name Armstrong an “idiot” for purchasing the NFT, and the duo could ignore the customer for your complete period of the eight-episode season.
Cobie advised at present that the stream will doubtless be broadcast on Twitch, and shot down the concept of streaming it on Coinbase’s personal social media platform, Zora, since every uploaded stream would grow to be its personal tradable token.
He stated 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 value alone breaks right down to $3.1 million per episode. If we assume that each episode will probably be three hours lengthy, that’s one million {dollars} an hour, and over $17,000 per minute.
It’s not totally clear, nonetheless, simply how legally binding the textual content on an NFT is, and whether or not or not Coinbase may push again to get some form of promotion in there, given its daring historical past of commercials.
Cobie says the brand new collection will now even be referred to as “Unc Only” as a result of 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 stated.
