🤑 Tokenize it?

Hey frens. Happy Thursday, and welcome back to The Drop.

I think Base’s “content coin” plays are about the most controversial thing that’s happened in recent weeks. You either love it — or hate it. I’m skeptical it’s not much more than just slapping a new name on an old thing (memecoins).

Today we’re talking Base, plus an OpenSea trading fail and much more. It’s a longer edition than usual, so dig in and let me know what you think about The Drop.

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

Base ‘content coin’ crashes, then pumped 350%

Coinbase’s Base team launched two tokens Wednesday afternoon — and a lot of people were not impressed.

One of the tokens is dubbed “Base is for everyone.” The second is called “Base @ FarCon 2025.” 

The first token quickly spiked 962% in price — from $0.0016 to $0.017. Then, it abruptly crashed, spurring a flurry of allegations that the token was a “scam” or rugpull.

Rabby, a crypto wallet, even labeled the first Base token a scam token on its interface as a warning to traders, Tally CEO Dennison Bertram pointed out. 

One trader who claimed to hold 1% of the token’s supply at one point called the whole thing a “dumpster fire.”

By Thursday morning, however, the token’s price had begun to rise again. Anything is possible in crypto, remember? 

The “Base is for everyone” token climbed up over 350% to $0.011 in the past day, as of 10:50 am ET Thursday morning. At that time, the token had a market cap of roughly $11.5 million. 

The second Base FarCon token was up over 7,000% in the past day, as of 11:20 am ET, but had a market cap of around $240,000 at that time (FarCon is an annual conference for the decentralized social media platform Farcaster).

Both of the Base “content coins” were launched via the social crypto platform Zora, where every post is a “memecoin.” Base picked Zora because it aligns with its vision that everything should be tokenized. 

Zora saw one of its highest revenue days ever on Wednesday because of Base’s launches. 

But are “content coins” just memecoins, rebranded? I think they fall somewhere in between what an NFT offers and what a memecoin offers because the coin’s utility (or lack thereof) really depends on what specifically is being tokenized and why. They could be seen as collectibles, or they could be bought to support content creators.

Base creator Jesse Pollack believes content coins are fundamentally different.

A content coin gets its designation “if it represents a single piece of content and it's created in a context where the expectation is set that the coin is the content and the content is the coin — no more, no less,” Pollack wrote on the topic, adding that it can be a way for creators to go viral.

“I think that most of the arguments around it being ‘bad’ because of explicit financialization are mostly just moralizing and from talking with artists who've actually coined things, I'm not seeing downstream negative impact,” he added.

Love it or hate it, tokens of all kinds will keep coming. Pump.fun was just the beginning. My prediction is that while some of these so-called content coins could soar in price — others will crash and burn (just like other cryptocurrencies).

“If we want the future to be onchain, we have to be willing to experiment in public. That’s what we’re doing,” the Base account wrote in a post Thursday morning, adding: “To be clear, Base will never sell these tokens, and ​​these are not official network tokens for Base, Coinbase, or any other related product. The content we share is creative, and we're going to keep bringing culture onchain.”

The case of the lost Ape

One Bored Ape Yacht Club holder lost his ape NFT — plus 25 wrapped ETH — in what seems to be an $80,000 mistake. 

A pseudonymous crypto trader known as Crypr0xi said he accidentally sent his NFT to another trader, who he has identified as an individual using the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) name Goddc.eth. That ENS name was registered by a wallet less than a year ago, but their X account was created back in 2011.

“I lost 25 ETH and my BAYC King in one exhausted mistake. I signed when I meant to receive. I’ve sent messages. No reply yet,” Crypr0xi wrote on X early Wednesday morning.

An Etherscan transaction confirms the NFT was sent around 10 pm ET Tuesday night in exchange for an OpenSea Gemesis NFT. That Gemesis collection has a floor price of roughly $45.

The trader claimed they had been trying to request 25 ETH in exchange for the Ape NFT, but placed that on the wrong side of OpenSea’s “Make a Deal” feature by mistake. That resulted in both that ETH and the NFT being sent to the recipient. 25 ETH is currently worth about $40,000. 

As of Thursday morning, the NFT is being held in a fresh wallet that contains that BAYC NFT, plus about $75,000 in ETH that another wallet sent to it around 1 am ET Wednesday morning.

Yuga Labs social lead BorisVagner.eth said: “So sorry this happened man, hope you’re able to get it back and patch things up.”

Another trader suggested that Crypr0xi “lost” the asset for the purposes of writing it off as a loss on future taxes — an allegation the trader denied.

The ape NFT had previously been moved back and forth between two wallets in the past three months. It had then been sold about two weeks ago for 22.5 ETH before this latest sale, per OpenSea data.

BAYC NFTs have a floor price of about 14 ETH, or roughly $22,000, at time of writing. At the peak of the NFT bubble back in early 2022, the collection’s floor price briefly surpassed $360,000.

But assets with rarer traits — such as the lost BAYC’s crown headwear — typically sell well above a collection’s floor price. The “King's Crown” trait is only found on 0.66% of the 10,000 BAYC apes. 

For those less familiar with crypto: Blockchain transactions cannot be reversed once completed. Funds and assets can sometimes be recovered or sent back to the original owner, however, via new transactions.

“You can keep the coins. But you can’t silence the soul. There is still time. To return. To be remembered with honor,” Crypr0xi said, adding: “I pray he sees this and chooses light.”

Another case of “all my Apes gone?” Hopefully, not gone forever — even if they’re selling for a small fraction of what they used to.

Solana Game Pass launches today

The Solana Game Pass event begins today, a spokesperson for the Solana Foundation shared with The Drop. Five to seven Solana games will be featured per week.

Here’s what going on:

1. Players can:

   • Log in to gam3s.gg.

   • Complete “engagement tasks” tied to each game like following accounts, exploring game content, or participating on community channels.

   • Earn entries toward the end-of-season rewards pool by participating.

2. Players can earn:

   • Up to four raffle tickets through weekly quests.

   • One bonus ticket by minting the official Solana Game Pass NFT today at 3 pm ET.

   • Minting the NFT gets players an extra raffle ticket for the end-of-season prize pool.

3. Raffle entries will be entered into a grand prize draw consisting of NFTs, tokens, in-game perks, early access codes and other game-specific rewards provided by the participating projects (and may even include a few rewards from us here at The Drop!).

• Magic Eden teased on X yesterday that its “Season 2” campaign is starting today. 

• Gaming-focused WolvesDAO’s WOOF token holders are getting a private Discord server this month.

• OpenSea added seamless minting that lets you mint a token on one chain using crypto from another chain. Pretty cool.