Jesse Pollak rejected claims that Coinbase is insufficiently aligned with Ethereum. Coinbase reported 150,279 ETH held for investment at the end of June. The dispute centers partly on how Bas
Base creator Jesse Pollak has pushed back against criticism that Coinbase undermines its Ethereum alignment by selling ETH generated through Base, calling the argument “wack” and pointing instead to the company’s long-standing ETH holdings and engineering contributions. The dispute gained attention this week as Ethereum community members questioned how Coinbase treats revenue from its Layer 2 network, but Coinbase’s latest regulatory filing adds an important distinction: the company still reported 150,279 ETH held specifically for investment as of June 30, 2026.
The criticism directed at Coinbase is easy to misread as a simple allegation that the company is dumping its Ethereum treasury.
That is not quite the issue.
Critics have focused particularly on ETH associated with Base’s economics. One widely circulated complaint accused Coinbase of selling ETH generated from Base execution fees into dollars and Bitcoin rather than retaining that ETH as a strategic asset. Pollak responded by arguing that attacking Coinbase over ETH sales ignores the company’s much larger relationship with Ethereum.
Those two claims are not mutually exclusive.
Coinbase can maintain a substantial long-term ETH investment while separately converting ETH received through operating activities. Treasury assets and operating revenue serve different corporate purposes, and treating them as a single pool obscures what is actually being debated.
The latest Coinbase filing makes the treasury side unusually clear.
As of June 30, the company held 150,279 ETH for investment, with a cost basis of approximately $340.6 million and quarter-end fair value of $235.7 million. At the end of 2025, the corresponding position was 151,175 ETH.
The position has therefore remained close to 150,000 ETH despite fluctuations between reporting periods.
The longer history provides stronger evidence for Pollak’s argument than the rhetoric surrounding the dispute.
Coinbase reported 115,700 ETH held for investment before adding 21,634 ETH during the first quarter of 2025, taking the position to 137,334 ETH. Holdings slipped to 136,782 ETH the following quarter before rising to 148,715 ETH in the third quarter. By the end of 2025, Coinbase held 151,175 ETH.
The company reported 150,193 ETH at March 31, 2026 and 150,279 ETH at June 30.
Coinbase ETH Holdings ETH held for investment PeriodETH HeldChangeQ4 2024115,700–Q1 2025137,334+21,634Q2 2025136,782-552Q3 2025148,715+11,933Q4 2025151,175+2,460Q1 2026150,193-982Q2 2026150,279+86
That history weakens any broad characterization of Coinbase as systematically exiting its corporate ETH position. From the end of 2024 through June 2026, its investment holdings increased by roughly 34,600 ETH, or close to 30%.
It does not, however, answer the narrower criticism concerning what happens to ETH generated through Base.
Understanding the disagreement requires separating Base’s fee mechanics from Coinbase’s investment portfolio.
Base is an Ethereum Layer 2 built on the OP Stack. Transactions incur an L2 execution fee as well as an L1-related fee reflecting the cost of publishing transaction data to Ethereum.
Base documentation says sequenced transactions can include priority fees, base fees and L1-cost fees, which are collected through separate fee vaults.
That means ETH flowing through Base has an operational function.
Part of the economics compensates for the costs associated with running and settling the network. Revenue remaining after those costs is economically different from ETH deliberately purchased or retained as a balance-sheet investment.
This distinction is common outside crypto. A company can be strategically bullish on a commodity or currency while still converting operating receipts denominated in that asset into the currency required to pay expenses, manage risk or allocate capital.
Ethereum community critics are making a different argument: because Base derives value from Ethereum and contributes activity to its ecosystem, Coinbase should retain more of the ETH produced by that relationship.
That is an alignment argument rather than evidence that Coinbase has abandoned Ethereum.
Pollak’s response addresses the latter more convincingly than the former.
Pollak described Coinbase as the largest “non-DAT” ETH holder “by an order of magnitude.” DAT refers to companies whose business strategy centers on accumulating digital assets as treasury holdings.
The first part of his broader argument is supported by Coinbase’s filings. Its 150,279 ETH investment position is substantial for a company whose primary business is running crypto infrastructure rather than accumulating ETH as its principal corporate strategy.
well yes I agree with that but putting aside the priority, the stupidest thing about it is that not only is coinbase a customer but *coinbase literally held 150K ETH for years*. through ups and downs and goods and bads. through people saying L2s were the future to saying L2s are…
— jesse.base.eth (@jessepollak) August 21, 2026
But comparisons require careful definitions.
CoinGecko’s Ethereum treasury tracker, for example, currently places dedicated ETH treasury companies far above Coinbase. BitMine holds roughly 5.74 million ETH, SharpLink about 868,699 ETH and The Ether Machine around 496,712 ETH. Bit Digital also sits slightly above Coinbase with roughly 158,461 ETH.
Those businesses fall into the category Pollak explicitly excluded.
Calling Coinbase the largest non-DAT holder therefore depends on how “DAT” is defined and which corporations are included in the comparison. It should be presented as Pollak’s characterization, not as a universally standardized ranking.
The underlying 150,279 ETH balance, however, comes directly from Coinbase’s SEC filing.
The quarter-to-quarter movement is particularly relevant to the current criticism.
Coinbase held 150,193 ETH for investment at March 31. Three months later, the figure stood at 150,279 ETH. That represents a net increase of 86 ETH.
The change is tiny relative to the overall position, but directionally it matters.
It means Coinbase did not reduce its disclosed investment ETH balance during the latest reporting quarter. The larger decline occurred earlier, when holdings fell by 982 ETH between December 2025 and March 2026.
Over the first half of 2026 as a whole, Coinbase’s investment position decreased by 896 ETH, equivalent to roughly 0.6% of its year-end balance.
That is difficult to reconcile with a broad narrative of aggressive treasury liquidation.
It remains entirely compatible with claims that ETH generated elsewhere in Coinbase’s operations has been converted into other assets.
The distinction is the core of the dispute.
Pollak’s second defense concerns Coinbase’s role as an Ethereum user and developer.
That claim has a more concrete technical foundation than a simple statement of corporate allegiance.
Base was built as an Ethereum Layer 2 using Optimism’s open-source OP Stack. Coinbase joined as a core developer of the stack and worked with OP Labs and the Ethereum development community on EIP-4844, which introduced blob transactions designed to reduce the cost of rollup data on Ethereum.
Base has also contributed to OP Stack infrastructure, including work on op-geth and op-node, while supporting client diversity efforts such as op-reth. The Base team has described those contributions as part of its effort to scale Ethereum rather than develop an independent Layer 1 competitor.
There is an economic relationship as well.
Every Base transaction includes an L1 security component related to publishing data to Ethereum. Base therefore generates demand for Ethereum blockspace even though most execution happens on the Layer 2.
None of that determines how Coinbase should manage ETH on its balance sheet. It does show why measuring Ethereum alignment exclusively through whether every unit of ETH revenue is retained produces an incomplete assessment.
The criticism nevertheless points toward a larger issue facing the Ethereum scaling model.
Layer 2 networks are supposed to increase Ethereum’s capacity by moving execution away from the main chain while ultimately using Ethereum for settlement and security. That architecture allows networks such as Base to process transactions more cheaply.
It also means a successful Layer 2 can capture its own economic value.
Base collects L2 execution fees while paying for the Ethereum resources required to settle activity. The difference between what users pay and the network’s costs can create revenue at the Layer 2 level.
For ETH holders, the relevant question is therefore not simply whether Base becomes larger. It is how much of that growth translates into economic demand for Ethereum itself.
This is why arguments over sequencer revenue attract more attention than Coinbase’s treasury holdings alone would suggest. They sit inside a continuing debate over how value is divided between Ethereum and the Layer 2 networks built on top of it.
Coinbase can simultaneously contribute to Ethereum’s technical development, hold 150,000 ETH and make operating decisions that some ETH investors dislike. Those positions do not cancel one another out.
Coinbase’s September-quarter filing will provide another clean data point for its corporate ETH position, but that alone will not resolve the disagreement Pollak responded to.
The more relevant dataset would separate ETH held for long-term investment from ETH generated through Base fees, ETH spent on Ethereum settlement and ETH subsequently converted into dollars, Bitcoin or other assets.
Coinbase’s SEC disclosures provide unusually clear figures for the first category. They do not offer the same transaction-by-transaction picture of Base’s revenue conversion that would be required to quantify the criticism precisely.
Until those flows are separated, the two sides are largely measuring different things. Pollak is pointing to Coinbase’s balance sheet and engineering relationship with Ethereum. His critics are questioning how the economic surplus generated by Base is ultimately allocated.
Coinbase’s next quarterly filing can show whether the 150,279 ETH investment position changes. Base’s on-chain fee flows will be the more relevant evidence for determining whether the narrower selling criticism has changed with it.
The post Treasury vs. Operations: Untangling Coinbase’s Complex Ethereum Relationship appeared first on ETHNews.
