Coinbase just acquired Echo for $375M. Coinbase appears to be leaning heavily into the Internet Capital markets (ICM) narrative. Here is a quick post discussing debriefing the move and what it means for Base ecosystem, including Noice, an ICM sleeper.

Coinbase’s ICM pitch is similar to the original Solana ICM thesis, nicely summarized here by Simon. It centered around bringing competent Web2 builders into onchain consumer apps, rethinking the fundraising and token structure aspects of these projects. Tailwinds for this narrative included the Solana Foundation’s hiring of Nikita Bier as an advisor, along with respected Web2 builders like Ben Pasternak making up the initial cohort of ICM builders. The face of this narrative was Believe App’s LAUNCHCOIN, which has since become one of the most hated tokens in crypto.

The narrative was criticized my many (myself included), as being a vaporware repackaging of existing concepts. It is very hand-wavy, seemed like all talk, and at the time it mostly was.

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