Why Coinbase should be more like Anthropic
Creator coins, builders, and what it takes to root for a huge company to win
This article is adapted from a video essay by Tally CEO & Co-founder, Dennison Bertram. Watch the full video on X.
Over the holidays, there was a lot of talk on X from Brian Armstrong, Jesse Pollak, and the Base team about what the Base app needs and how to grow the ecosystem. People gave feedback, threads flew around, and something clicked.
There’s a real opportunity here. Coinbase has all the ingredients to become the kind of company that builders genuinely root for.
The Anthropic model
Think about how Anthropic operates. On paper, they’re a heavily funded AI company on the path to make their founders and early team very wealthy. But the feeling around them is completely different.
They use their own tools the way developers use them. They talk openly about building Claude with Claude; about engineers who don’t type boilerplate anymore because they’re vibe coding with the model. New features aren’t abstract. They show up as concrete boosts to what an individual can build in a weekend.
This past holiday, Claude was the main character. Engineers were home from work, using it, sharing what they built. People loved it.
When Anthropic wins, builders feel it directly. Suddenly someone can scaffold a full app in an afternoon. They can explore an idea they might have shelved before because it was too big for one person. There’s a tight feedback loop between Anthropic’s product roadmap and individual capabilities.
Their success and builder success feel correlated. That’s powerful.
Coinbase has everything it needs
Here’s what’s exciting: Coinbase already has the foundation to create that same feeling.
They’re not just an exchange anymore. They’re a public company with a regulatory moat, incredible engineers, a serious L2 in Base, and a profit-sharing deal with Optimism. Base is moving billions of dollars in value. They have the distribution, the talent, and the positioning to be the place where the next generation of crypto apps get built.
And they’re already shipping meaningful infrastructure. X402 payments. AI integrations. MPC wallets. Smart wallet innovations. These are real tools that expand what builders can do.
The pieces are there. The question is how to connect them to that feeling of shared success.
The opportunity
Imagine if every major Base initiative passed one simple test: Does this make individual builders and users obviously more powerful?
Not “does this create a new market”, but does someone walk away from a new feature feeling like they just got a new superpower? Does the ecosystem feel like a rising tide that lifts all boats?
There’s a version of Base where the default builder experience is: “I can do more here, faster, than anywhere else.” Where Coinbase winning feels like every builder’s toolkit getting better. Where the success stories aren’t about who traded fastest, but about what people built that wasn’t possible before.
That’s the energy that made people love Coinbase in the early days. Brian’s willingness to fight for the technology, the sense that Coinbase’s wins were the community’s wins, that meant everything to people in crypto.
What this could look like
A few things that would amplify that feeling:
Neutral infrastructure. Clear, transparent paths for any great project on Base to get surfaced, funded, and routed liquidity. When builders see that quality rises regardless of partnerships or narratives, they invest more deeply.
Capability unlocks. Tools that lower gas friction. Account models that make UX finally make sense. Payments that feel instant and global. On-chain identity that’s actually useful. Each release making the impossible possible.
Shared upside mechanics. Ways for the ecosystem to win together. When the rising tide is structural, not just rhetorical, people show up differently.
The goal isn’t to copy Anthropic: Coinbase is a big, regulated, publicly listed financial company, not a scrappy AI lab. But the relationship to builders can feel the same: every time Coinbase wins, builders win too.
An invitation
This conversation matters. Not just for Coinbase, but for all the companies in crypto that are winning right now. The ones that figure out how to make their success feel like shared success will build the most durable ecosystems.
For Base builders, people at Coinbase, or anyone thinking about this: what would make Base feel like a place where everyone’s gonna make it? What would make builders genuinely excited when Coinbase ships something new?
Let us know.
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