Base is Eating the World: Jesse Pollak on AI Agents, Prediction Markets & the Future of Crypto

Summary

Jesse Pollak, Head of Base at Coinbase, discusses the Base ecosystem's explosive growth, recent leadership changes, and his focus on chain infrastructure over the Base app. He shares theses on AI agents transacting on-chain, tokenized inference markets, prediction markets, and memecoins as attention assets. He also reflects on why the social crypto bet failed, the cold card exploit, and the future of self-custody, while maintaining that crypto is just 1% through upgrading the global financial system.

• Jesse Pollak explains why he handed the Base app to Kobi to concentrate on chain infrastructure, emphasizing growth in tokenization, trading, and payments.
• He views competing L2s like Robinhood Chain as validation of the on-chain model and believes the market is large enough for multiple players.
• Pollak categorizes memecoins, creator coins, and content coins as 'attention assets' converting internet attention into financial value, and remains bullish on continued experimentation.
• A central thesis is that AI agents will natively choose crypto for payments and trading, driving a massive wave of adoption on Base and other chains.
• He highlights tokenized inference markets, where inference is tokenized and traded, as a uniquely on-chain innovation with strong growth potential.
• Prediction markets are seen as a cultural phenomenon now fulfilling the early crypto vision of free information through open markets, with significant activity on Base.
• Pollak admits the social crypto bet didn't pan out, but believes crypto will eventually upgrade social networks; the near-term focus is on financial infrastructure.
• After the cold card exploit, he remains optimistic about self-custody but stresses the need for robust, well-resourced custody solutions like the Base app.