Morning Minute: Coinbase Leans on ICOs, Monad Up First

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analyzes and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s most important news:

• Crypto Majors Fall Overnight; BTC -1% at $104,800
• Coinbase Unveils Coinbase Token Sales ICO Platform, Will Host MON Sale
• Monad shared tokenomics and public sale details for MON ($2.5 billion FDV)
• Uniswap plans to turn on the fee switch and burn 100 million UNI tokens (UNI +20%)
• The U.S. Treasury Department and the IRS are issuing guidance to make investing in ETFs easier

🚀 Coinbase unveils its own token launchpad, with Monad being the first

And Monad will be the first to benefit from this.

📌What happened

Coinbase just unveiled a new ‘Coinbase Token Sales’ platform as a regulated, transparent way for retail users to purchase new tokens directly through the app.

This is Coinbase essentially reintroducing public token launches to US retail for the first time since the ICO boom of 2017.

TLDR:

• The platform will host monthly sales from November 17 to 22, starting with Monad’s MON token
• Users can submit purchase requests in USDC over a one-week period, with allocations determined by a bottom-up algorithm that fills smaller orders first to maximize distribution.
• Purchased tokens are automatically listed on Coinbase after sale, providing projects with immediate liquidity and visibility.
• Users who sell within the first 30 days of the token launch will likely be penalized for future distributions.

This all comes after Cobie’s Echo platform was acquired for $400 million just a month ago.

🗣️ What they say

“We designed token sales as the ideal way to launch: transparent, fair and compliant.” – Coinbase blog

“This is the first broad retail token sale in the US since 2018.” – Company statement

“We’re excited that MON is our first entry, bringing Monad’s high-throughput technology to millions of new users.” – Coinbase announcement

🧠Why it matters

This is a clear signal that ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are fully returning to the crypto space.

Expect every major protocol and/or app to do some sort of ICO in the near future.

And this is probably at the expense of air droplets.

Giving tokens to buyers via ICO just makes more sense than giving them to users for free via airdrops.

Both are a form of community creation, but one comes with skin in the game and the other does not.

Monad is the perfect example. They reserved 3.3% of the token supply for the airdrop (spread liberally across CT) and 7.5% for their token sale.

So there’s still a “free money” element for lucky airdrop recipients, along with a path for investors to inject capital and reap the benefits of Monad’s launch.

Expect this to become the new norm.

And expect more and more teams to try to use Coinbase’s Token Sales platform at launch as a de facto “stamp of approval” from one of the biggest players in the space.

🌎 Macrocrypto and memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my attention:

In corporate bonds/ETFs

In Memes

• Memecoin Leaders are usually red, along with majors; DOGE -3%, Shiba -2%, PEPE -3%, PENGU -3%, BONK -3%, TRUMP -3%, SPX -7% and FARTCOIN -10%
• WOJAK (+100%) to $5.6 million was one of the top Solana movers; 401jk (+63%) and Pumpcade (+32%) were other top gainers

💰 Token, airdrop and protocol tracker

Here’s an overview of the top token, protocol and airdrop news of the day:

🚚 What’s happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines of the day in NFTs:

• NFT Leaders were predominantly red across the board; Punks -1% at 35 ETH, Pudgy -3% at 5.9, BAYC +2% at 6.4 ETH; Hypurr’s -4% at 860 HYPE
• Kodas (+7%) was a notable winner
• Moonbirds opened a merchandise store with a first capsule collection