After years of venture-funded dominance, Coinbase is reviving the concept that crypto tasks can increase cash instantly from their customers.

The US-based trade introduced on Oct. 21 that it acquired Echo, a community-fundraising platform based by veteran investor Jordan “Cobie” Fish, in a $375 million deal to rebuild fairer, on-chain capital markets.

Based on the trade:

“Echo believes in democratizing early-stage investing, in order that extra folks can assist the subsequent era of breakthrough corporations…Integrating Echo’s instruments will assist us allow extra direct group participation, becoming a member of tasks with capital, fully onchain.”

The acquisition positions Coinbase on the heart of a pattern reshaping token financing. Echo has already processed greater than $200 million throughout 300 offers, utilizing its merchandise Echo Personal and Sonar, a self-hosted public-sale device.

Collectively, they let tasks run compliant token gross sales with out counting on centralized launchpads or opaque enterprise allocations.

In the meantime, Echo will stay a standalone model, however Coinbase plans to fold its infrastructure right into a full-stack pipeline spanning its trade and Base layer-2 community. This implies the fundraising platform’s device of launch, fundraising, and secondary buying and selling could be absolutely built-in into the Coinbase platform.

Coinbase says the mixing will ultimately prolong past crypto tokens to tokenized securities and real-world property (RWAs).

From ICO Bust to Regulated Launchpads

Coinbase’s acquisition inevitably recollects the Preliminary Coin Providing (ICO) increase of 2017 and 2018, when startups reportedly raised round $20 billion globally earlier than the bubble collapsed underneath regulatory stress.

Nevertheless, a five-year freeze in public token gross sales adopted as personal enterprise rounds took over.

Now, with clearer guidelines arising globally, together with the US, Europe’s MiCA framework, Singapore’s licensing regime, and KYC-based launchpads, public fundraising is resurfacing in a managed kind.

Based on Tiger Analysis, compliant launchpads have generated tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} in 2025, with tasks like Plasma’s XPL token utilizing Echo’s Sonar system to shut oversubscribed gross sales.

Coinbase’s Echo acquisition indicators a bid to institutionalize that momentum. By routing early-stage choices by means of its regulated trade, the publicly-listed agency can expose vetted tasks to 110 million verified customers whereas giving retail buyers a authorized path into offers as soon as restricted to VCs.

A return to the gang  however to not 2017

Whether or not this marks the return of ICO-style hypothesis is much less sure.

Analysts at Tiger Analysis see right this moment’s setting as structurally totally different as a result of compliance is stricter, yields are decrease, and knowledge asymmetry is narrower.

Based on the agency, launchpads comparable to Buidlpad in Korea present sturdy short-term efficiency, however common token positive aspects have settled beneath 5×, a far cry from 2017’s 100× rallies.

On the identical time, Blockworks Researcher Carlos stated:

“The present ICO panorama navigates a tradeoff between excessive antagonistic choice (dangerous founders) & capital formation maturity (excessive valuations).”

Nonetheless, demand for clear, on-chain fundraising stays excessive. Echo’s mannequin of screened members, verifiable smart-contract funding, and open cap tables provides a regulated framework for retail inclusion.

Tiger Analysis acknowledged:

“Public launchpads present renewed entry to ‘early funding alternatives’ that remained closed for a while. They provide particular person buyers excluded from enterprise capital-centered market buildings a path to take part in early-stage tasks by means of fairer and extra clear strategies.”

If profitable, Coinbase’s guess might bridge two eras of crypto finance: the speculative crowdsales that ignited public curiosity and the regulated token markets now rising underneath world oversight.

Within the course of, the trade could show that group capital formation, as soon as dismissed as a relic of the wild-west cycle, nonetheless has a future on Wall Road rails.