Morning Minute: Coinbase Puts Tokenized Stocks on Base

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors up 1-5%, SOL leads; BTC at $79.2k
• BTC ETFs see another $337M in inflows; $116M for ETH
• Coinbase announced tokenized stocks live on Base
• Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM hits new ATH in revenue
• FWAIR PFP drop leads to massive gas spike on ETH and 16,000+ spins

🏛️ Coinbase Puts Tokenized Stocks on Base

Coinbase-issued tokenized stocks went live on Base on Monday, starting with fractional shares of Apple and Nvidia. Every eligible user outside the United States can now hold a claim on real equity in a self-custody wallet, trade it on Aerodrome, or post it as collateral on Aave. AERO climbed more than 13% on the day.

Each token corresponds to a share held by Alpaca, a regulated broker and custodian, and the holder has a direct claim on that share rather than exposure to a derivative tracking its price. So this is the real deal. Coinbase built it on a token standard called B20, which handles dividends and stock splits without changing token balances, so an open lending position or liquidity pool doesn’t break when Apple pays out.

This is the second time in a week a US company has shipped a product that Americans can’t touch. Coinbase added perpetual futures to its Base App through Hyperliquid on Wednesday, excluding US, UK, and Canadian users. Robinhood launched its own layer-2 chain last month with tokenized stocks among the first offerings, available in over 120 countries—but not at home.

Vlad Tenev spent last week publicly pressing US policymakers to fix the rules, writing that it would be a strange outcome if the rest of the world built the future of ownership around American assets while Americans watched. The SEC has a tokenized-stock exemption sitting delayed, and its new Regulation Crypto Assets proposal covers token fundraising rather than equity tokenization.

But Coinbase isn’t slowing down waiting on regulation. Base says more Coinbase-issued stocks and other real-world assets arrive in the coming weeks. The infrastructure is finished and shipping. The rules aren’t. Now we wait to see whether Washington closes the gap before the offshore version becomes the default.

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are slightly green with SOL leading; BTC +2% at $79.1k; ETH even at $2,480; SOL +5% at $99; HYPE +3% at $80
• Top alt movers include STX (+8%), INJ (+8%), SPX (+3%) and JUP (+4%)
• Oil -2% at $82.60; Gold even at $4,690
• Stock futures are green; DOW +0.4%, Nasdaq +0.8%
• Stand With Crypto endorsed 32 House incumbents for the midterms, a bipartisan slate including Tom Emmer, Glenn Thompson, Bryan Steil, and Democrats Jim Costa and Ritchie Torres
• Strategy raised $2.01 billion selling MSTR shares last week and created USD Cash, a $1.59 billion pool it said may be spent on Bitcoin, its holdings unchanged at 840,447 BTC
• Strive bought 1,110 Bitcoin for $81.5 million at an average of $73,409, lifting holdings 5.5% to 21,356 BTC
• Tom Lee’s Bitmine added 32,447 ETH worth about $81 million, reaching 5,847,611 tokens and leaving it roughly 187,000 ETH short of its 5% supply target
• OFAC designated Iran’s crypto sector as sanctionable alongside gold, technology, aviation, and shipping, letting Treasury target anyone determined to operate in those sectors regardless of location
• Cosmos Labs advised validators on Cosmos EVM chains to halt their networks as it works through an ongoing security incident affecting users

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $337M in net inflows on Monday; the ETH ETFs saw $116M in inflows
• STRC closed over $97 on Monday, its highest close since June 1

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mixed; DOGE -1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE even, PENGU +3%, TRUMP -1%, BONK even
• Robinhood chain saw major gains again; Cashcat +40% to $200M, PONS +32%, AI +25% and Juggernaut +50%; DTF debuted at $8M
• Solana leaders included Cate (+70%), Jimothy (+80%), Tiny (+12x) and CMNS (+12x); Ansem even at $255M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM hit a new ATH in daily revenue with over $500k on Aug 23
• Kinetiq unveiled Elysium as a Hyperliquid L2 using HYPE as its gas token, with half of sequencer fees funding open-market KNTQ buybacks and burns
• Pumpfun posted $12.48 million in weekly protocol fees for August 17 to 23, up 16% week over week and its second straight best week since late January, burning $6.13 million in PUMP and pushing cumulative burns past 16% of total supply
• Quotrons launched tokenized equity pools on Ink, running eight markets including NVDA, AAPL, TSLA, and SPY as Uniswap v4 pools quoted in USDG, with a hook routing half of every 0.30% fee to Quotron terminal holders

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly flat; Punks +1% at 32.4 ETH, BAYC -1% at 8.2 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.25 ETH; Stonkbrokers even at 5.4 ETH
• Quotrons (+190%), Cash Cats (+57%) and KYC (+45%) led top movers
• FWAIR PFPs dropped on FWA, leading to a massive surge in spinning and the NFTs debuted at a 3.25 ETH floor (FWA at $30M)