Base Creator Coin Crashes 67% in Hours – Nick Shirley’s $9M Token Proves “It Just Didn’t Work”

The meteoric rise and collapse of a creator token linked to YouTuber Nick Shirley is fueling a renewed debate over whether “creator coins” can generate sustainable on-chain activity, even if they are buoyed by viral attention and major platforms.

The token, launched on the Coinbase-backed Ethereum Layer-2 network Base via the Zora creator platform, has been lost about 67% of its value within hours, falling from a peak valuation of almost $9 million to around $3 million on January 1, 2026.

Shirley’s Creator Token became a hype and then lost momentum

Shirley’s token, traded under the ticker $THENICKSHIRLEY, emerged in late 2025 after a 42-minute investigative video in which he published went viral on X, attracting hundreds of millions of views and attention from high-profile figures.

The video, targeting alleged childcare fraud in Minnesota, thrust Shirley into the center of a political and media firestorm after the claims were amplified by Elon Musk and figures linked to the Trump administration.

The accusations later became part of broader discussions sparked when federal officials announced a freeze on child care funds in Minnesota.

Against that backdrop, Shirley’s maker token was promoted as a real test of decentralized content generation.

The initial rise was rapid as trading activity drove down the token’s fully diluted valuation about $9 million, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong public praising the launch as an example of monetizing creators through the chain.

However, the rally disappeared almost as quickly as it started. Within days, the token had fallen by more than 60%, with most of the trading volume coming from existing on-chain traders rather than new users onboarding Base of Zora.

Despite the price drop, on-chain data showed that Shirley earned an estimated $41,600 to $65,000 in creator royalties related to trading activities.

Critics argue that this outcome highlights a structural imbalance, with makers and early traders benefiting from short-term speculation while broader adoption fails to materialize.

Various traders described the episode as a missed opportunity for Base and Zora to turn viral attention into sustainable user growth.

One of the most shared critiques came from a trader and content creator known as notthreadguy, who argued in a video that Shirley’s launch represented the strongest possible test case for creator coins and still failed to show sustainable demand.

He pointed to the lack of follow-up from platforms and the lack of meaningful onboarding of new users, noting that profits and losses were largely limited to speculative traders already active on the chain.

Additionally, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged having a “chat” with notthreadguy.

Creator Coins are getting cool as Base moves deeper into SocialFi

The backlash stemmed from broader frustration over creator-centric experiments on Base.

Other Zora-linked tokens have followed similar patterns, characterized by sharp price spikes followed by rapid declines and limited liquidity.

A separate Solana-based meme coin, $LEARING, created by third parties to capitalize on a spelling mistake spotted in Shirley’s video, briefly reached a market cap of over $3.3 million before also fading away.

The episode comes as Base continues to position itself as a hub for decentralized social applications, following on from previous experiments such as Friend.tech and newer platforms such as Farcaster and Zora.

According to industry forecasts, the SocialFi sector could exceed $10 billion by 2033, but user retention has remained uneven.

Often cited as an early success, Friend.tech saw its number of daily active users peak around 80,000 before dropping below 10,000.

The post Base Creator Coin Crashes 67% in Hours – Nick Shirley’s $9 Million Token Proves It Just Didn’t Work appeared first on Cryptonews.

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