The Wolf Of All Streets · Nov 1, 2026 · 55m · 45m saved
With Jesse Pollak, Creator of Base at Coinbase
Photo via fortune.com
Base, the blockchain Coinbase built, launched tokenized US stocks about eight weeks ago, and the day before this interview they traded about $100 million. Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base at Coinbase, told The Wolf Of All Streets that crypto has found its market in banking, trading and payments.
For most of its 13 years crypto was sold as a store of value or a speculative bet. Jesse's view is that the larger business is moving the world's dollars and stocks onto faster, cheaper, always-open systems, and that almost none of that has happened yet.
"We have less than 1% of the world's dollars, less than 1% of the world's equities moving on these new rails... over the next 5 years, 10 years, it's going to be about going from less than 1% to 10% to 50% to 90%." — Jesse Pollak
Jesse has spent ten years at Coinbase, five of them running engineering for its consumer products, and built the first version of Base in a one-week sprint. It now works with JPMorgan, Citi and Shopify.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 55 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
Crypto's real market is financial services, not only Bitcoin as a store of value
Less than 1% of the world's dollars and stocks move on these systems today
Tokenized stocks on Base traded about $100M in a day, eight weeks after launch
They are fully backed securities with voting rights and dividends
JPMorgan and Citi now move customer money on crypto rails, around the clock
AI coding tools have doubled how fast Coinbase and Base ship, and Jesse trades code with Brian Armstrong
Companies opting out of tokenization are moving slowly, not saying no, Jesse says
2027 will be the year agentic finance emerges, after agentic payments in 2026
1. A Decade at Coinbase
Scott Melker, who hosts The Wolf Of All Streets, opened on how Jesse got to Coinbase. His startup, built on two-factor authentication, did not work, but it brought him into the company.
Jesse joined Coinbase in 2017 when it acquired his startup's one-person team
"I have been now in the Coinbase orbit for 10 years... that business ultimately didn't work, but it led to Coinbase acquiring the team, which was really just me, in the year of 2017." — Jesse Pollak
He spent five years leading engineering for Coinbase's consumer products, Coinbase, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Wallet. In 2021 and 2022 he tried several new ventures of his own, and most of them failed.
