Jesse Pollak, Vice President of Engineering at Coinbase and creator of Base, has been active on X pushing back against accusations that the exchange has been dumping Ethereum, telling critics that Coinbase remains the largest holder of ETH in the world.

How a “badly misplaced” comment started the argument

The dispute erupted when chaskin.eth (@jchaskin22) wrote on X that the Ethereum Twitter community’s resentment toward Coinbase is “badly misplaced,” likening the anger to a business turning on its biggest customers because those customers chose not to buy as much of its stock.

Pollak agreed with the sentiment, saying it “blows my mind” to see Coinbase attacked over its ETH sales.

The response did not sit well with everyone. Replying to venture investor Nick Tomaino’s praise of Coinbase as “values aligned with Ethereum,” cyp.eth (@0xcyp) countered that the company’s values include “constantly selling ETH from Base execution fees to USD and BTC.” That reply encapsulates the community’s broader annoyance with the company: the people in charge of Base earn in ether, then allegedly sell the proceeds into other assets.

Pollak’s “order of magnitude” defense

Choosing not to argue about specific transactions, Pollak built his case around size. In his view, Coinbase is “the largest non-DAT holder of ETH by an order of magnitude,” meaning it holds more ETH than any peer that is not a dedicated digital-asset-treasury vehicle.

He added that “Coinbase literally held 150K ETH for years,” carrying that position through market cycles and shifting narratives about whether layer-2 networks were Ethereum’s future.

The public numbers are consistent with Pollak’s argument. The Strategic ETH Reserve tracker lists Coinbase with approximately 151,180 ETH, worth roughly $256 million, ranked sixth on the list — behind dedicated treasury firms such as Bitmine Immersion Tech, which holds over 5.5 million ETH.

Where the sequencer revenue goes

The criticism is centered on Base in particular. Coinbase operates the network’s sequencer, the component responsible for ordering and processing transactions. The sequencer earns fees in ETH; those fees are then converted into dollars or bitcoin, and critics have read this as Coinbase dragging down the value of Ethereum rather than increasing it.

Others have noted that the company parks bitcoin on its balance sheet while treating ether like an operating asset rather than a long-term conviction holding. Chaskin.eth agreed on the question of priorities, reasoning in the past that approximately 75% of Coinbase’s revenue has come from trading and holding bitcoin, while hoping for a change in that figure.

The ecosystem angle

Pollak’s rebuttal is that treasury math ignores the broader picture. He credited Coinbase with shipping EIP-4844, the upgrade that reduced layer-2 costs by releasing “blob” data, and with playing a part in the creation of USDC, one of the largest stablecoins.

He went on to highlight the millions of users the exchange has brought into Ethereum, arguing that this reach outweighs any single balance-sheet decision. In that sense, the argument is less about one company’s treasury posture than about how infrastructure providers should be judged when they are simultaneously building on Ethereum, operating core network components and managing assets on their own books.

Base was launched in 2023 and is now one of Ethereum’s busiest layer-2 networks. It has just reached Stage 1 decentralization, which reduces Coinbase’s direct control over how the chain operates.