Jesse Pollak Defends Coinbase’s Ethereum Holdings Amid Selling Criticism

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• Coinbase’s own SEC filing shows its ether treasury fell to 150,279 ETH by June 30, 2026, down from 151,175 ETH at the end of 2025.
• Its bitcoin treasury grew 12.5 percent over the same period, from 15,389 BTC to 17,311 BTC.
• Base lead Jesse Pollak called Coinbase the “largest non-DAT holder of ETH by an order of magnitude” in response to accusations that the company is selling down its ether.

Jesse Pollak, the Coinbase executive who built and leads its Base network, wrote this week that Coinbase is “the largest non-DAT holder of ETH by an order of magnitude,” pushing back on accusations that the company is selling its ether.

Coinbase’s own quarterly filing with the SEC tells a narrower story. The company’s corporate ether treasury fell to 150,279 ETH as of June 30, down from 151,175 ETH at the end of 2025, even as its bitcoin treasury grew 12.5 percent over the same stretch.

Two Different Pools of Ether

Pollak’s claim is likely accurate, “DAT” refers to ether treasury companies such as BitMine Immersion, which holds 5.8 million ETH, and SharpLink Gaming, which holds close to 900,000.

Coinbase beating those figures “by an order of magnitude” only works if the count includes ether the company custodies on behalf of customers and institutional clients, a pool put at around 4 million ETH in third-party tracking. That is not the same pool as the 150,000 ETH sitting on Coinbase’s own balance sheet.

Custodial scale measures how much of the network’s ether passes through Coinbase’s platform. Corporate treasury measures whether Coinbase’s own position is growing or shrinking, which is the specific behavior critics say it isn’t doing.

A Familiar Defense, at an Awkward Moment

This isn’t the first time Pollak has made this argument, or the first time Coinbase’s ether accounting has drawn scrutiny. Base, the layer-2 network he built on top of Ethereum, has moved sequencer fee revenue into Coinbase’s custody since at least early 2025, a practice Base’s own team has defended as a security and auditing measure. Critics at the time asked why the ether treasury barely grew despite tens of millions of dollars in sequencer revenue flowing through it.

In the third quarter of 2025, Pollak made a similar case, saying the company’s holding had risen by nearly 12,000 ETH and that “we keep buying more,” a defense that came shortly before Coinbase’s stock fell on disappointing trading volumes.

This latest round lands about five weeks after Pollak stepped back from running the Base app itself, having admitted his two-year bet on onchain social apps had failed. Defending Coinbase’s Ethereum alignment now carries more weight for him than it might have a year ago.

Price, Not Selling, Explains Most of the Gap

Coinbase has not issued a statement beyond Pollak’s post, the dollar-value gap in Coinbase’s ether position is mostly a story about price, not selling: the position’s fair value fell from $448 million to $236 million over the same six months in which its unit count barely moved.

Coinbase’s bitcoin position lost value too, falling from $1.35 billion to $1.01 billion even as its unit count grew by nearly 2,000 coins. Both treasuries lost value as prices fell through the first half of the year. Only one of them also grew in size.